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I’ll be honest with you: I didn’t watch much of Sunday evening’s regular season finale for Marquette women’s basketball.
That’s the downside of the Golden Eagles tipping off against Providence at 4:30pm Central time, 90 minutes after the men’s team started off against DePaul at Fiserv Forum. As a season ticket holder for both squads, obviously I was going to be at Fiserv when the women’s game tipped off, and by the time I wound my way back to the car and returned to my house, it was already the fourth quarter.
I thought I was arriving home just in time to see the Golden Eagles put the finishing touches on a win. After wiping away a six point Providence lead in the final 70 seconds of the first quarter, Marquette was touch and go with the Friars for most of the second quarter, and the Golden Eagles were only up 38-37 at halftime. The back half of the third quarter had tilted the game toward Marquette as they went on a 15-2 run in the final 5:30 of the period, and with neither team scoring in the final 60 seconds, the visitors were up 14, 59-45, heading to the final quarter.
I thought Marquette had it under control.
I walked into the house during the fourth quarter media timeout, and right after that break, Providence’s Payton Dunbar cut the margin to 10. As it turned out, Marquette had already scored their final field goal of the game with 5:51 to play, but they just needed to play smart and be solid.
They were not.
After that MU field goal — a layup from Lee Volker — Providence put up an 11-1 run, and the lead was just four with 2:27 to play. Four Marquette turnovers worked against the Golden Eagles in that run, and after that, it was time for missed free throws to work against them. In the final 3:30 of the game, Marquette missed seven free throws. The Friars were fouling trying to extend the game, and the one thing you can’t do in that circumstance is miss your freebies.
Luckily, Providence couldn’t do squat on their end. The lead got down to just four points as I mentioned, but it went no further. The Friars went 2-for-9 after that, and even with two more turnovers from the Golden Eagles and all those missed freebies, PC couldn’t get closer, and finally the clock expired on a 69-65 win.
Skylar Forbes led Marquette with 24 points in this one, and she added five rebounds and three assists, and you know what, honestly, we can let the missed free throws late slide a little bit. Lee Volker put up a double-double on 15 points and 12 rebounds, and she contributed two assists and four steals, too. Kennedi Perkins led the way in the assists column with four.
The win clinches the #4 seed in the Big East tournament for Marquette. Officially, they finish tied for third with Seton Hall at 12-8, but the Pirates have the 2-0 season series tiebreaker.
Up Next: This was the regular season finale, so that Big East tournament quarterfinal is next. As the #4 seed, Marquette already knows that they’ll face the #5 seed in the quarterfinals instead of waiting to find out their opponent from the winners on the first day of the tourney. The #5 seed is Creighton, as the Bluejays went 11-9 in the league after Sunday’s 73-71 win over Xavier and got the edge on a tie with St. John’s. Tipoff on Peacock is set for 1:30pm Central time on Saturday, March 7th. Marquette and Creighton split the season series with each team winning at home, but the Omaha game was amidst MU’s inability to close games strong and the Jays pulled out the win late.
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