For now, Marquette women’s basketball is 6-3 on the year but more importantly 2-0 in the Big East. They are one of just two 2-0 teams in the league with only three more standing at 1-0. That is going to
change rapidly come Wednesday when the Golden Eagles hit the road to visit the other 2-0 team in the league… which also happens to be the #1 team in the country… but that’s a problem for a future date.
For now, Marquette is wandering off the Big East path for a moment to play a non-conference game against an opponent that, on paper, is the most overmatched squad on the schedule for the Golden Eagles. Le Moyne comes in further down the ol’ BartTorvik.com rankings than a Winthrop team that Marquette beat by 32. Much further down than a Bowling Green team that Marquette beat by 16. Further down than a Milwaukee team that Marquette beat by 32.
And we can’t ignore the fact that Marquette is coming off a pair of wins to start off Big East play with margins of 31 and 25 points. The Golden Eagles are rolling teams that are further down the chain than them and that’s always a good way to go through things.
With that said, Marquette hasn’t been out on the floor in a game that counted since December 7th. That’s because of Finals Week on campus, and it’s a safe bet that the regular practice schedule for the team got a bit tossed around because Finals Week tosses everyone’s schedules around. So maaaaaaybe Marquette’s smooth running engine of three-point shooting — the Golden Eagles have shot over 35% in each of their last six games and are now #13 in the country in three-point shooting percentage! — is quite so smooth running. Maybe their defensive communication isn’t quite so hot. And so on, all because of a jumble of a week.
But that’s fine. That’s why you schedule a game against a team that, on paper, shouldn’t give you too much trouble. That’s why you give yourself a chance for fine tuning before you tangle with the #1 team in the country a few days later.
As long as Marquette wins without too much difficulty, then that’s A-OK by me.
Game #10: vs Le Moyne Dolphins (1-7)
Date: Sunday, December 14, 2025
Time: 1pm Central
Location: McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
This is the first ever meeting between Marquette and Le Moyne, which is more about this being Le Moyne’s third season in Division 1 than anything else.
At 1-7 with no wins in regulation, I think it’s safe to say that this season is quite going well for head coach Nick DiPillo and the Dolphins. Then again, Le Moyne started 2024-25, DiPillo’s first season in charge, with 15 straight losses, so one win in their first eight is an improvement from that. In terms of where their season is going, the losses are more a function of what their schedule looks like than where Le Moyne might end up in the NEC. They’ve played six BartTorvik.com top 250 opponents after starting the year at #351 themselves, and only two of their games have been at home. Strangely, their overtime victory over Lafayette was on the road, while the overtime loss to Cornell — the worst team they’ve played this season, at least according to Torvik’s rankings — was at home. After all of that, it’s important to remember that the Dolphins were picked to finish fourth in the NEC this year, and as of right now, they’re fifth in their league in the Torvik rankings and sixth out of 10 in the NET.
Le Moyne doesn’t have a double digit scorer, but preseason all-NEC honoree Eli Clark is the closest at 9.8 per game. Clark shot 33% from behind the three-point line last season, so I can understand why she’s shooting more than half of her shots behind the arc this season. She’s just not coming up with makes to this point of the year at under 29%. Clark leads the team in assists with three per game, and I presume a decent chunk of that comes from throwing it to Peyton Dincher. The 5’10” freshman is connecting on 46% of nearly five long range attempts per game, and if DiPillo is going to coach the squad to have one of the 30 highest three-point attempt ratios in the country, they should probably lean into letting Dincher shoot it a lot.
After all, she’s the only one over 34%, and 5’8” freshman Kayden Clark (33.3%) is the only other Dolphin north of 30%. Yes, that’s Eli’s younger sister.
Even with that type of shooting, Le Moyne is still #136 in the country in three-point shooting percentage this season, so it’s not like DiPillo’s system is really that wrong. However, they really don’t do much else very well. BartTorvik.com has the Dolphins somewhere in the 300s in five of the combined eight categories for the Four Factors on offense and defense. The shooting is one of the other three, although their two-point shooting is #311. The remaining two are defensive rebounding and defensive free throw rate. They’re not good at defensive rebounding, merely not awful, and at #123 at FTR, they’re maybe merely good, not outstanding. I presume that their offensive turnover rate would be a lot better without a 42% that they put up in a 100-28 loss to Illinois.
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