If I had told you on New Year’s Morning that Marquette was going to have the following conditions for their game later that day on the road against Xavier, what would your reaction have been?
- Kennedi Perkins and Abbey Cracknell would remain out with their existing foot injuries, and they would be joined on the bench in warmups by Skylar Forbes, who was out with what the ESPN+ broadcast team called “an illness.”
- Down one starter and a key backup, Olivia Porter would play just 23 minutes, largely because she picked up two fouls in the first 4:12 of the game and snagged her third with 3:52 left in the second quarter.
- Jaidynn Mason would commit six of Marquette’s 23 turnovers, with Porter and Lee Volker adding in four each themselves.
- Jordan Meulemans’ shooting woes since her illness game against UConn would continue, as she would go 1-for-5 from long range while starting in place of Forbes and playing 37 minutes.
- Marquette would give up more points to Xavier in the third quarter than they did in the entire first half.
- Marquette would go the final 4:44 without a field goal.
It’s not a rosy projection, is it?
But thanks to a 14-0 run led by six points from Halle Vice that burned about five and a half minutes of the second quarter, Marquette didn’t have to worry too much about the Musketeers on Thursday afternoon. That run left Marquette up 17, 30-13, and it was a 17-4 run to the halftime
horn.
Xavier did score more points in the third quarter than they did in the first half, but that’s partially because they had just 17 at halftime. Still, 25 is a lot of points for a quarter, but at least Marquette threw 20 points back at them. MU’s lead hit its biggest total of the game when Lee Volker canned a three pointer with 7:09 left in the third, so Xavier’s output in the frame was slightly mitigated.
Still, a 6-0 run to end the third quarter meant that the Musketeers went into the fourth quarter down just 11 points, 53-42.
That’s the closest that they would get, as Vice popped a three-pointer 20 seconds into the fourth quarter. A three from Jordan Meulemans with 4:44 to play was yes, Marquette’s final field goal of the game, but it also pumped the margin back up to 17, and on top of that MU held Xavier to just one field goal for the rest o the game after that, too. It could have gotten bad for Marquette as the Golden Eagles committed five of their 23 turnovers in the game in this final stretch, including a pair of shot clock violations, but the defense held and that was that.
On a day when Marquette’s caretaking was not working for them, they made Xavier pay in other ways. The Golden Eagles pulled in 12 offensive rebounds, scoring 10 points off of those chances. That’s a 41% rebounding rate for MU as they shot over 51% on twos and a perfectly fine 35% on threes in this game. Even better than that, though: Marquette held Xavier to just seven second chances in the entire game. Xavier couldn’t get anything up and in on a regular basis in this game, and Marquette made it pretty clear that XU was going to get one shot per possession and that was it.
On a day where Marquette was shorthanded and getting some rough performances from several players, Halle Vice was a shining star. She just barely missed a 20/20 game, getting there on points with 8-for-15 shooting, including both of her three-point attempts, but she fell just one rebound short with 19. Vice had half of Marquette’s offensive rebounds all by herself, and she added five assists and two steals while playing 39 minutes.
Lee Volker was good, other than the turnovers, getting 18 points and nine rebounds, plus two blocks and a steal, and Jaidynn Mason added six assists to balance out her six turnovers. She also had six points, two rebounds, a block, and two steals.
Highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and ESPN+:
Up Next: Hopefully Marquette got all the shaky bits out of their bones down in Cincinnati, and hopefully Forbes — who was on the bench, so it’s not like she had something contagious that the coaching staff was worried about — is back in the lineup come Sunday afternoon. That’s when Marquette welcomes Villanova to the McGuire Center for a 3pm Central time tipoff on Peacock. The Wildcats are 12-2 on the year and a perfect 5-0 in Big East play after opening up 2026 with a 74-64 home win over Creighton.
