Marquette Women’s Basketball Preview: vs Creighton

Okay, so look. Marquette isn’t going to shoot 61% on three-pointers every single game for the rest of the year.

BUT

Sunday against Villanova was the second time this season that Marquette has connected on over 60% of their three-point attempts, and the second time in Big East competition, too. The Golden Eagles have hit at least 33% of their long range shots in all but two games this year — big surprise, the two are Minnesota and UConn — and they’ve hit at least 38% in eight of their 15 games.

At this point, it’s surprising when the shots aren’t going down for the Golden Eagles.

But Marquette has to be able to do more than hit shots if they want to win ball games. 6-for-17 (35%) shooting wasn’t enough to beat St. John’s, same against Gonzaga in Florida earlier this season. To be quite honest about it: Marquette’s defense isn’t quite as tough as it was last season. The Golden Eagles finished the year at #30 in BartTorvik’s defensive efficiency rankings a year ago, and now midway through Cara Consuegra’s second season in charge, Marquette is hanging out in the mid-50s. Teams are shooting it just a little too well against MU, especially inside the arc.

If Marquette can find a way to recapture some of that defensive magic and pair it with this great shooting — four players attempting at least two three-pointers per game AND shooting over 37%! — then maybe they can really get something cooking over the next 14 games heading into the postseason.

Hey, side note: What do you think the odds are that Halle Vice puts up a fourth straight double-double? It would be her fifth in the last six games, too. I don’t think Marquette needs her to do that to win, but I think it would be very helpful, right?

Big East Game #7: vs Creighton Bluejays (7-8, 3-3 Big East)

Date: Thursday, January 8, 2026
Time: 7pm Central
Location: Al McGuire Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Television: truTV, with Cindy Brunson, Christy Winters-Scott, and Chelsea Sherrod calling the action
Streaming:truTV.com/WatchtruTV or HBO Max
Live Stats:Stat Broadcast
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle

Marquette is 14-19 all time against Creighton. The Bluejays have won four of the last five meetings between the two teams, including last year in Omaha.

There’s at least a little evidence to suggest that Creighton has stabilized the direction of their season since Kiani Lockett suffered what is now officially a season ending knee injury back in November. Things didn’t start well for the Jays, losing by 16 to South Dakota State in the opener, by 34 to Nebraska, and then by one at home to Northern Iowa in the game where Lockett suffered her injury. After that, they lost on the road by nine to UNLV as well.

But since then, things have gotten a little bit better. Not in terms of record necessarily, as the Bluejays have gone just 6-4 in the interim, but in terms of computer numbers. Their Game Scores as calculated by BartTorvik.com are trending much better, with none of the games scoring as poorly as the losses to SDSU or Nebraska. Their rankings on Torvik bottomed out at #108 after the UNLV game, but they’re up to #88 as I type this on Wednesday morning. After the UNLV game, Creighton dipped as low as #110 over at Her Hoop Stats, but they’re up to #69 now. The NET debuted on November 30th, not long after the UNLV game, and the Jays were #186 at the time. Now? #95. Not great, obviously, but again: Much improved over the past five weeks.

This season was always going to be a slightly weird one for Creighton given how many incredibly important seniors they lost from last year, and throwing in the extra wrench of losing Lockett early on could have really sent things into a tailspin. That hasn’t happened to them, so full credit and marks for moving the needle in a positive direction as the season goes along. They’ve even had a bit of an extra level of difficulty thrown in lately, as freshman Ava Zediker, who is leading the team in scoring and is tops in assists with Lockett out, has missed the last two games. One was a 10 point loss at Villanova — could have happened with her — and an 8 point home win against Butler back on Sunday. That was a big battle back game for Creighton, as they were down 10 in the second quarter, but flipped the led by halftime and went up nine very quickly in the third quarter.

If Zediker remains out, then Neleigh Gessert becomes Creighton’s leading scorer, although there’s a little bit of a question about that. For example: She put up 25 points against Villanova but just five against Butler even though her minutes in her first two starts of the season were essentially the same. The catch? Gessert went 7-for-10 behind the arc against the Wildcats but 0-for-3 against the Bulldogs. She’s a 40% shooter on the year averaging nearly eight attempts per game even though she had been coming off the bench, so clearly Gessert needs to be defended carefully, but she’s been on far ends of the spectrum the last two times out.

The other catch to defending Neleigh Gessert? Her twin sister Norah. She’s only a 30% three-point shooter this season on less than three attempts per game in about 18 minutes a night, and she got her first two starts in the last two games as well. This is Marquette’s first time seeing Creighton this season, and thus the first time trying to figure out how to defend the two freshman look-alike six-footers with deeply varying shooting stats.

Big Picture: This Creighton team is a step back from what we’ve seen from Jim Flanery’s squads the past several years. They don’t have the high efficiency offense, and they don’t have the “good enough for that offense” defense on the other end, either. The issue on offense isn’t the three-point shooting, they’re still hitting those and they’re still taking a ton of them. The Bluejays don’t have two-point scoring this time around, so if MU can force them into bad looks from deep and limit them to just once chance — CU doesn’t get on the offensive glass much anyway — then things should work out okay.

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