Well, let’s start here: Marquette is going to be wearing pink uniforms on Wednesday night for breast cancer awareness reasons. Here’s Lee Volker demoing the uniforms:
And so we move from the facts of the situation to a slightly unbelievable note: Marquette’s road win over Georgetown on Sunday goes into the books as one of MU’s best performances of the season, at least according to BartTorvik.com’s Game Score system. I’m guessing the Game Score math cares a lot more about the Golden Eagles being up 17 late than it does about the final margin resting at 8. That’s good, I suppose, but I presume that head coach Cara Consuegra’s thoughts are more along the lines of my thoughts: Man, things have been real shaky for Marquette lately.
To give you a baseline: Torvik has Marquette at #51 in the country right now, carrying the #54 offense and the #72 defense when you take the entire season into account.
If you look at just since the end of Marquette’s 18 point home win over Creighton back on January 8: The Golden Eagles are #84 in the country with the #74 offense and the #136 defense. As Marquette wasted an early lead against Seton Hall and let Georgetown start off with a 19-0 run and a pair of near misses against St. John’s and DePaul particularly with MU wasting 19 points of a 20 point lead to the Blue Demons, and a nailbiter on the road against Butler with Skylar Forbes not even making the trip due to personal reasons…… yeah, it’s been a bit of a mess for Marquette in the last few weeks.
And yet, they still come into Wednesday night with a four game winning streak. That’s four straight Ws since that disaster of a start against the Hoyas, even if things were a little dicey along the way to putting all four on the board. Wednesday is Marquette’s last chance to get the shakiness out of their system. After that, it’s at Creighton, home against Seton Hall and UConn, then at Villanova, all in the span of 15 days. Anything less than Marquette’s best possible effort is going to leave them with multiple losses in those four games, and heck, even the best possible effort could land them with L’s anyway given the trajectories of Seton Hall, UConn, and Villanova this season.
And on top of that, Marquette has a couple of health mysteries to unravel. Jordan Meulemans has missed the last two games, although she made the trip to Georgetown after not being on the bench against DePaul. Olivia Porter left the Georgetown game after her leg buckled underneath her as she planted. She walked off mostly unassisted and walked from the locker room to the bench completely unassisted. I’d put the odds of both women playing on Wednesday as Questionable at best, but we’ll see what happens, I suppose.
There’s also the issue of Why Did Skylar Forbes Miss The Butler Game and Why Did Skylar Forbes Not Start The Two Games Since Then? Mix in a fun dose of “Apparently Khadijah Rushdan was not at either of the last two games” and man, there’s a lot of mystery weirdness swirling around this team as of late. Postgame pictures from the Georgetown win certainly don’t indicate that anything is off, if anything the vibes seem immaculate.
Hopefully Wednesday night’s performance is more in line with that.
Big East Game #14: vs Providence Friars (10-13, 3-9 Big East)
Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2026
Time: 6:30pm Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+, with Bob Brainerd and Chloe Marotta calling the action
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 27-6 all time against Providence. The Golden Eagles swept the season series last season to move their winning streak to 16 straight against the Friars, including 69-51 in Milwaukee last year.
When I did the Where Are We Now? rundown for Big East women’s basketball back on Christmas, Providence was one of just three teams in the positive range and one of four teams that were not in the negatives. I’m not going to do the legwork to determine if PC is still sitting in the positive at this point of the year, but I can tell you that the Friars have gone just 2-8 since I published that. Part of that is not their fault, as I refuse to assign them blame for losing by 41 to South Carolina or by 37 to Connecticut. That still leaves Providence at 2-6 since those two games were played (they were PC’s first two after Christmas), and they come in having lost six of their last seven contests and each of the last three.
Providence’s problem is, generally speaking, they’re getting run out of games. Maybe the final margin isn’t terribly bad, but that’s because it’s drifted back towards them as the game comes to the end stages. For example, last time out, only lost to St. John’s by five, 62-57, which sounds okay, right until I tell you that they were down 18 when the fourth quarter started. Even their lone win in the last seven games, an 80-77 home decision against Creighton, that one had the Friars up seven early, then down five early in the third quarter before they steered it back into their control. Based on how their other games have gone, that would easily could have slipped away as the second half wore on.
As a team, Providence does not immediately pose any notable or obvious threats to the Golden Eagles on either end of the floor. BartTorvik.com has PC sub-100 in both offensive and defensive efficiency, and the best of their Four Factors rankings is defensive free throw rate, where the Friars are only #130 in the country. Joke is on them here, as Marquette is one of the worst teams in the country at getting to the free throw line. I suspect that Cara Consuegra has several mean things to say about that topic, given how much of MU’s offense runs through their two biggest starters shooting it around the rim.
That’s full team data and stats, though. Obviously there are individuals that Marquette has to worry about, and that starts with Sabou Gueye, who leads the team in scoring at 14.7 points per game. She is PC’s only double digit scorer, although Teneisia Brown isn’t far off at 9.3 a game. The 5’9” Gueye is not a threat to shoot it, averaging just one three-point attempt per game and only hitting 17% of those, but she is hitting over 52% of her two-pointers. We’re 23 games into the season and on average, teams can’t stop Gueye from getting inside and scoring, so that presents an interesting problem for MU.
As far as women who can fill it up from long range, Payton Dunbar averages a team high 4.9 three-point attempts per game, and she’s hitting over 34% of those. Orlagh Gormley is the team leader in shooting percentage just a few tenths of a percentage point ahead of Dunbar. She only attempts two per game, so Marquette has to dissuade her from trying more than that.
Brown, Gueye, and Gormley double as Providence’s top three rebounders, although Nalani Kaysia is tying with Gormley at 4.1 per game. Kaysia was a mid-season addition to the Friars roster even though she was already announced as joining the squad back in the spring. Given what I wrote about her back in PC’s Summer Vibe Check, there miiiiiiiiiiiiiight have been an eligibility question or two involved in getting Kaysia on the court for the Friars. In any case, she’s given them a little bit of a minutes boost if nothing else, since she has started in five of their last seven contests. I will say this though, since it’s unclear as to whether or not Kaysia was practicing with the team up until she debuted: If you’re on this roster and you just got your minutes swiped by a 24 year old former volleyball player who has a kid about to turn two who just walked off the street, it’s time to adjust your mindset about what you’re putting into this program.