On Friday night, Cara Consuegra opened up the doors to the McGuire Center for fans to come in and watch her Marquette women’s basketball team in a scrimmage. It wasn’t a traditional scrimmage that you might think of, and I’ll explain that as we go. Here’s a collection of thoughts and notes on things that I saw, but I’m actually going to start with some notes from the very end.
- At the end of the scrimmage, Consuegra grabbed the house mic and pointed out a couple of things to the attendees. The first was that she and Michelle Nason put their heads together to try to find the best possible time to do a scrimmage and this was kind of the only date that worked. As such, it was kind of short notice — they only announced it on September 23rd — but that means that Consuegra and her staff were thrilled with the turnout.
- The other thing that Consuegra noted that her team as witnessed on Friday is far from a finished product, as this was just their fourth full in-season practice of the year, with the first official practice coming on September 30th. This is a little bit of a byproduct of the team’s first schedule game coming on Thursday of opening week, but that’s how it all worked out.
- That’s an important note for everything here because…… I didn’t think that they looked particularly great at any point. Part of that is there’s six new players and six returning players, and only two of those returning players had an actual regular role last year. Even the returning players aren’t necessarily used to playing with each other for extended periods, especially with Charia Smith sitting out last year with an injury. Part of it is also everyone except for Charlotte transfer Olivia Porter having to get used to a brand new coaching staff and direction.
- I did get to the McGuire Center a little bit late, but that’s fine, as the team was working on a closeout drill on the south basket, rotating players onto the court going against the male practice players running a basic pass it around offense to get the defenders to move. After that, they split up into teams to face off against each other. Here’s how the roster broke down:
Blue Team: Ayuen Akot, Jada Bediako, Skylar Forbes, Olivia Porter, Bridget Utberg, and Lee Volker, with Deont’a McChester and Chaia Huff coaching
White Team: Abbey Cracknell, Jaidynn Mason, Kennedi Perkins, Charia Smith, Aryelle Stevens, Halle Vice, with Khadijah Rushdan and Director of Player Development Chaz Franklin coaching
Y’all can count, and so this meant that both teams started the scrimmaging with one player on the bench. That was Akot for the Blue Team and Stevens for the White team.
- The focus of both teams on offense seemed to be to try and work the ball inside, and that was particularly notable for the Blue Team trying to get the ball to 6’3” Jada Bediako. I use the word “try” here because there was a whole bunch of throwing lobs into the post/towards the rim all night long…… and there was a lot of passes going out of bounds, and not because the passes were tipped.
- In case you were wondering if Noted Former Marquette Assistant Coach Cara Consuegra is getting support from the history of the program, do not worry! Former head coach Terri Mitchell arrived not long after I did, and she appeared to spend most of the scrimmage interacting with her former players, who were all gathered together in the middle-ish section of the McGuire Center.
- After the end of the first 10 minute quarter: White 16, Blue 13. I did the math: 64-52 if that repeated four times for a full game. Like I said: They did not look particularly impressive, but maybe this is all a by-product of everyone knows everyone’s deal a little too well after summer and offseason scrimmages and workouts.
- Things changed up for the middle two quarters. Remember the male practice players from before? Yeah, the Blue and White teams joined up and played against the guys for the next 20 minutes. Your “starting” five for this section: Kennedi Perkins, Olivia Porter, Lee Volker, Skylar Forbes, and Jada Bediako. Does that mean that’ll be the starting five on opening night? I’d say at least 50/50 odds, right?
- The team had the advantage on the practice players early, up 9-3 when they took a mid-quarter “media” timeout, but it was 17-13 at the end of 10 minutes, and only because Jaidynn Mason wove through traffic to get a layup at the horn. This would not be the only time that Jaidynn Mason looked like the most assertive and impactful player on this night.
- Credit where credit is due: I thought Lee Volker looked like the best player on the floor in the first segment, although that might be more “I saw Volker doing things that I saw Lee Volker doing last year, and I didn’t see half of these women doing anything at all” than anything else.
- The second quarter against the practice players started with Charia Smith and Ayuen Akot subbing in for Porter and Forbes….. and it was a 7-1 start to the period for the practice players. That turned around quickly to 10-7 at another media timeout and the half ended after Bridget Utberg got a floater to beat the shot clock right before the half ended. That was a 16-13 quarter for Marquette and so 33-26 overall against the practice players. 66-52, if that’s repeated for another 20 minutes of action, and again, that’s not the world’s best offensive performance…. but it is pretty great defense. I think it’s a net positive that the practice players — and there’s a whole roster full of them, so they had lots of chances to makes substitutions — could push the team a little bit. I don’t think it’s great news that Marquette’s Division 1 basketball team was not blasting a bunch of regular students who just like basketball a lot out of the water, but long term, it’s probably good for the team to need to work in practice.
- The final quarter of action went back to Blue vs White, with White Team subbing in Aryelle Stevens in for Jaidynn Mason in the “starting” lineup. This quarter is where I got the vibes that Mason was at the least having the best night out of anyone on the team. That’s vibes only, as arena staff wasn’t putting player stats up on the scoreboard and unlike the men’s scrimmage the next day, there wasn’t an official box score published. That’s not the wrong call given the switch between the team vs team and team vs practice players portion, I’m just pointing it out.
- For a moment or two in the “fourth” quarter, I noticed White Team playing a true 5-out style, with everyone out on the perimeter. Kind of notable, given the seeming interest in trying to pound the ball inside early on.
- The final 10 minutes ended in a 13-13 tie, so they put one more minute up on the scoreboard. Officially, Charia Smith is the Hero Of The Day, as she was the only one to record a bucket in the extra time. That gave White a 15-13 lead, and after both teams split a pair of free throws — first Volker, then Mason — White had a 16-14 lead with just 2.7 seconds left. Blue’s play to try and tie it was an inbounds from the sideline — they advanced the ball on a timeout, of course — thrown deep into the paint for Bediako. She got the shot off smoothly, meaning she left herself enough time to grab her miss and put it back up again, but that one missed as well. White Team wins 16-14, so they win the team-only quarters 32-27.
- 64-54 is not a great offensive performance by either side when you spin those 20 minutes out to 40, so maybe Consuegra and her staff are just really good at coaching defensive principles? Or maybe the next month will give them lots of practice time to get things more fluid on the offensive end.
Maybe if I had official stats I could tell you that I was surprised to find out someone had 15 points or someone had 10 rebounds or something like that. I don’t, so I can’t tell you that one player or another was better than I realized.
That’s what I saw and what I thought about it. Got questions? I can try to answer them in the comments.
