#1 — Who’s going to start alongside Halle Vice?
I think we can agree that after starting all 62 games of Cara Consuegra’s tenure as head coach to this point, Halle Vice is going to keep on starting for the Golden Eagles. Seems like a safe bet.
The other four spots? I have no idea, and unless this is literally someone on the coaching staff reading this, neither do you. Vice is the only returning starter from last season, so that right there means we have to go looking for answers. MAYBE Jordan Meulemans picks up one of those spots after averaging over 21 minutes a night last year, but that doesn’t feel like a lock-it-in 100% thing. Kam Herring and JJ Barnes? Played 48 minutes last year and recovering from knee surgery that’s still only about a year old. Feels unlikely for both.
Amongst the newly arrived transfers, MacKenzie Givens has the most experience of playing Division 1 basketball, and specifically playing in the Big East. But she also didn’t start every game for Xavier last year, and, uh, Xavier was not good. I’m not sure Kayl Petersen’s game translates to complimentary enough to Vice’s to justify a starting gig alongside her. Yu Han Lin might be a point guard option for Marquette after posting a top 325 assist rate, but she also turned the ball over at an atrocious rate, so maybe not. I could see a way that Brooklyn Hall jumps to the front of the line on the wing, but that’s just guessing at whether or not she’s ready for that responsibility after one semester of redshirting at South Florida. Noelle Anthon? Maybe, if her rebounding at the junior college level pays off at the Division 1 level?
Freshmen starting is usually a rough go of things, but as you can tell, I don’t see an obvious point guard candidate here quite yet. If Se’Crette Carter or Kinley Asp can do that job, then there’s a space for them to start, I think. Amina Traore might be the most obvious pick behind Meulemans and Givens just because she’s the only center listed on the roster, and if she’s a compliment to Vice, then that’s a great way to go. I just don’t have great confidence from her meager playing time history in the French second division that Traore is a guaranteed lock to pan out for Marquette right out of the gate. The fact that she only joined the roster in August right as the semester started is also a knock against her.
And now I’ve wandered all the way around the roster and I am no closer to talking myself into a guess at the starting five than I was when we started. Guess we’ll find out on Tuesday night!
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#2 — Can Cara Consuegra establish an identity for her program this year?
If you go take a peek at the Team History page for Marquette at BartTorvik.com, you can see that there is not a lot of statistical similarities between head coach Cara Consuegra’s first season at Marquette and her second season. Anywhere there is a similarity — like ranking #131 in offensive rebounding in Year 1 and #175 in Year 2 — it’s in a situation where it’s not something that Marquette was objectively good at doing in both seasons. We’re asking if there’s going to be an identity of what Consuegra is trying to get her team to do on a year in and year out basis here, and “they’re a mid offensive rebounding team” is not something anyone is trying to hang their hat on.
Literally anything would count here. Marquette was a good shooting team last year, but not the year before that. Marquette was pretty good at forcing turnovers in Consuegra’s first season but kind of awful at it in Year 2. They had a top 30 defense in Year 1, but slipped down to #73 last season. The offense got more efficient from year to year, going from #100 to #69, so if MU can keep it in the top 70 this year, that counts as establishing some kind of a pattern.
And so on and so forth. I could keep this up forever.
Heck, I could even look at Consuegra’s history page and suddenly realize that her Charlotte teams never had a consistent identity either. To be clear, there’s actually nothing wrong with not having a year to year identity at face value. If you’re constantly evolving what you’re doing based on the strengths and weaknesses of your roster, that’s kind of a good thing…. but you kind of have to be a consistent winner to get away with that. Can’t really say that about the four Charlotte teams listed on Consuegra’s history page, and I think it’s safe to say that Marquette took a step backwards in Consuegra’s second season even though she returned her entire roster from her first campaign.
And so the idea of a lack of consistent winning brings us around to….
#3 — Is Marquette going to get into the first ever 76 team NCAA tournament?
Well, the good news is that Marquette’s definitely going to get their chances to prove they should be. If we use BartTorvik.com’s preseason rankings, the Golden Eagles are going to face four top 100 opponents in non-conference action, plus #131 Belmont. That makes Belmont a better resume opponent for MU than both Xavier (#146) and DePaul (#155), so ultimately, net positive for Marquette there.
Everyone else in the Big East projects as a top 100 foe, which is good news. The bad news is that only UConn (#1) and Villanova (#20) are top 50 opponents, so it seems that the access to elite level opponents might be a bit lacking once we get to league action. If Marquette can prove themselves to be the best of the rest, then that might be good enough to get into the largest NCAA tournament field in history.
Unfortunately, BartTorvik.com projects Marquette at #82 in the country when #38 Columbia was the best team to miss the tournament a year ago. With seven extra at-large bids — the newly reset Pac-12 is going to reclaim their automatic bid this year, so one less at-large spot than the expansion from 68 to 76 would seem to grant — that makes #51 Kansas the best team in the Torvik rankings to miss the field if we just count the next seven available teams into the 76 team bracket.
Finishing #82 would probably mean Marquette misses the tournament. That would not be a very cool way to end the season. It might be a bit expected given how harshly the roster turned over since last season, but also part of that was built into Cara Consuegra taking in so many transfers with just two years remaining when she was hired as the Marquette head coach.
If this team comes together and Marquette can swipe some non-conference victories to shine up a resume, and then they skate through Big East play without any damaging losses? I think the ceiling for this team includes an NCAA tournament berth, sure. It’s just hard to project it happening right now.
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