Okay, let’s get everyone caught up to speed so we all understand how we got here.
Back on the recap for the road win against Georgetown on February 1st, regular reader and commenter marquettefan13 noted
that Marquette women’s basketball had been short an assistant coach “for at least the last two games” and fellow regular Carmenjos noted that the coach in question appeared to be Khadijah Rushdan. At the time, Rushdan was on the team roster page, so it could have been any number of things that were causing her absence.
After I published the recap of the road loss to Creighton on Monday morning, Carmenjos jostled my memory to check in on the roster page…… and wouldn’t you know it, Khadijah Rushdan is no longer on the official roster page.
From looking through some Marquette photos in the archive, I can see Rushdan in a picture for the road game against St. John’s on January 21st. She’s right there over Cara Consuegra’s right hand, just above the ball in Skylar Forbes’ hand.
Then, she’s not in the huddle on the road against Butler on January 25th. That’s not necessarily proof that Rushdan wasn’t there, it’s just proof that she’s not in this huddle….. but this would be the first of the two games that marquettefan13 was talking about.
I should also note, for the purposes of pointing out a lack of useful communication from the women’s basketball team and the McGuire Center offices in general, that this was the game that Skylar Forbes missed for what was termed personal reasons. I am not connecting these two things together in any meaningful way, I am merely saying that the two things happened at the same time and Marquette has been less than forthcoming about what may or may not be going on in either circumstance. Any connective tissue that you’re forming in your head right now is happening because Marquette is letting it happen.
Here’s the closest I can get to a picture of the Marquette coaching staff during the home game against DePaul on January 28th. Going from left to right, you can see Michelle Nason’s hands and leg, then Michael Garven, a player behind him but sitting on the bench, Chaia Meier standing, Cara Consuegra standing, a player seated behind Huff and Consuegra, Deonta McChester, Sam Logic, someone I don’t recognize or have a photo ID for but is definitely not Rushdan and then Charia Smith. My usual experience watching games says that it’s all players the rest of the way down the bench. If Rushdan was at this game, she would be in this picture.
Tweets aren’t as great as pictures, but when the team doesn’t post pictures, video is the best you can do. Anyway, Rushdan’s not on the bench at Georgetown on February 1st, as you can see everyone I listed above in the exact same order that they were in against DePaul.
Same goes for the Providence game on February 4th, except there are pictures, just none of enough of the bench at the same time.
Same thing for Sunday’s game against Creighton, leading us to our discovery on Monday morning.
What happened? No idea, other than you don’t see coaches just up and disappearing from a team in the middle of the season very often. I also presume that this is not a wacky IT mixup where Khadijah Rushdan just accidentally got deleted from the roster. That would be hard to believe amidst a stretch of five straight games that she was not in attendance for at the exact same time. There is a Human Resources aspect to all of this, so that does make it hard for Marquette to officially talk about this if it’s anything stronger than “outside circumstances dictated that Rushdan had to leave the team and would not return.”
If — giant blinking red arrows, warning lights, and sirens IF — there is any connection between Forbes missing the Butler game and Rushdan disappearing at the same time, then my instinct is that it would be in Marquette’s best interest to be up front about what that is….. but also, again, then there’s a massive HR and university policy implication to all of that, and I don’t wish that logistical nightmare on anyone. This is also where Marquette’s standing as a private university comes into play, as obviously any intra-office communications on the topic of Rushdan’s departure would be subject to a Freedom of Information Act request if MU was a public school.
Khadijah Rushdan had been with Marquette since the spring of 2023, originally getting the job as assistant coach under then-head coach Megan Duffy. Cara Consuegra elected to keep Rushdan on staff one year later when she took on the head coaching job when Duffy left Marquette for Virginia Tech.
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