On Sunday afternoon at The Finn, Marquette women’s basketball gave up a 12-0 run to Villanova over about seven minutes of game time. That left the score at 14-2, and at the end of the period, it was 16-5 favoring the Wildcats.
One of two things was then going to happen:
- Marquette punches back and it turns into a competitive game at some point and eventually one team or the other wins.
- Marquette has no answer for anything from Villanova on this day and the Wildcats just hold them at arm’s length at best or blow them out at worst.
Friends, it was Option #2.
Marquette got it within seven points in the second quarter for a moment but ultimately went into the locker room down 11, effectively not moving at all from the end of the first. Then the Wildcats scored the first four
points of the second half and never led by less than 12 after that, but also never more than 16. 12 was the margin heading to the fourth, and after two Kennedi Perkins free throws to start the frame, Villanova went on a 17-2 run to really establish who was the better team here.
Your final: Villanova 64, Marquette 39.
That was not an encouraging performance after keeping it fairly competitive against #1 UConn just eight days ago.
To be clear: This was a failure of Marquette’s offense. They had allowed just 29 points at halftime and just 43 points through three quarters. Heck, 64 through four quarters isn’t exactly bad. Villanova didn’t shoot over 50% in any of the first three quarters and were under 40% in the middle two quarters of the game. This contest was there for the Golden Eagles to grab it even though they were down double digits almost immediately…
….. They just never did.
22 turnovers didn’t help their case, that’s for sure. However, nine of those came in the first quarter. That means just 13 the rest of the game, and five of those were in the fourth quarter as Villanova blew the game open. Maybe things go a lot different if there’s just four turnovers in each of those bookend periods because that’s really where VU did their damage here, but that also means that Marquette’s offense was just anemic for the middle 20 minutes when they were actually getting shots up.
Up Next: One final home game before one final road game to end the season. Marquette’s home slate wraps up this coming Wednesday night when Xavier comes to Milwaukee. Tipoff is scheduled for 6:30pm Central time, and ESPN+ will have the broadcast. It will be Senior Night, so expect the pre-game festivities to get started pretty early before tipoff because Marquette has eight seniors listed on the roster. As for the Musketeers, they suffered a 76-67 loss to DePaul on Sunday to drop to 11-16 overall and 4-14 in the Big East.
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