World News – USA – 2020-21 Marquette Women’s Basketball Season Preview: The Returning Players

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Have you had a chance to read our rundown of the Marquette Golden Eagles women’s newcomers to basketball? You should do this! It’s Part A of our look at Megan Duffy’s roster for the 2020-21 season, and you’re currently looking at Part B.. You should always start with Part A before reading Part B..

We’ll move on to the names you know from last season in this article, and we’ll start with the seniors and work down to the younger players from there.

I’d like to point out that Selena Lott is the player on the Marquette roster most injured in the Connecticut resurgence in the Great East. Lott was one of five non-huskies unanimously selected for the preseason’s All-Big East team. If UConn had been transferred to the American Athletic Conference this season, Lott could potentially have been Preseason Player of the Year. Without Connecticut, the door would be easy for Lott to position himself for the postseason variant of this award. I mean, sure, there’s a chance Lott will get there this year anyway, but with three huskies receiving All-League awards in the preseason as they prepare for another national championship, it feels like as if it were a chance rather than an actual battle.

Even so, she will be one of the best players in the league and arguably one of the best seniors in the country this season. That’s not nothing. As we discussed earlier when we discussed the newbies, the depth behind Lott is enhanced. Hopefully that means she doesn’t have to do as much for the Golden Eagles as she did last year. While playing more than 34 minutes a night, Lott still ranked 35th in points per attempted goal, scoring 65th, according to Her Hoop Stats. best effective field goal percentage in the nation. Lott’s support rate was top 50, her theft rate was top 500 and in a brand new member of the HHS family we know she was number 49 in the country on Win Shares.

As great as it was, the limitations of the Marquette squad a year ago allowed teams to isolate her from the game. That’s exactly what Seton Hall did at South Orange in early February last year, when they played well over 38 minutes but only went 4-1 off the field. SHU’s faceguarding resulted in no assists and four turnovers as well as a 72-60 pirate victory.

I don’t think Lott can play much better himself than last year. But with more experience in last year newbies / current sophomores and added talent in the new freshmen, I think Lott can have a bigger impact. Lott can get even better this year if he plays a little less and thus becomes a little fresher and gives other people some of the responsibility.

Officially, we can’t say 2019-20 was a big breakout for Lauren Van Kleunen. I mean, it’s impossible to say « breakout » for a woman who played 23 and 8 in her first college game. From then on, LVK’s first two years under Carolyn Kieger went downhill for some insane reason. She averaged less than 16 minutes per game for the first two seasons and while she definitely broke her ass on the pitch, we’ve never really seen that much of her.

That changed when Megan Duffy took over the reins last year. With four talented strikers on the squad, Duffy made the inward goal and recovered a major focus of the team, and the Ohio-born native was the second largest beneficiary of the style after Altia Anderson. Van Kleunen started in 30 of 32 games, an average of more than 25 minutes per night, and achieved career bests in terms of points, rebounds, assists and shooting rate. While Kieger wanted to hire Van Kleunen more as a guard and winger, Duffy sent her around and around the paint and it paid off in a big way. Gone (well, almost completely gone) was the 24-point three-point shooting in the career, and Van Kleunen paid for Duffy’s trust in her by becoming a top 250 offensive rebounder and putting her athleticism and physique to use dominate opposing players.

What’s in stock this season? Well, more of the same. Maybe a little more as Marquette has to figure out what to do without Anderson’s athletic presence on the pitch. With two newbies battling for Anderson’s minutes, Van Kleunen may have to do some of it until Liza Karlen and Julianna Okosun get their feet wet and the coaching team is comfortable giving them responsibility. That’s not the worst in the world, given her efficiency (# 304 points per possession) in her minutes last season and the fact that she averaged 25. 5 minutes per game without committing too many fouls. As long as the efficiency is maintained, while the minutes and with it the tiredness increase, this is a winning combination for Marquette until the new children feel comfortable in their roles.

Marotta was the one who suffered last year when Megan Duffy realized what she had in Altia Anderson. Marotta started in Marquette’s first 13 games and played more than 20 minutes in eight of these competitions. As Anderson demanded more and more playing time due to her hitting the ground, Marotta came off the bench and her minutes continued to fall from there. She was still playing in all 32 games by the end of the year, but only ended an average of 17 minutes a night.

That’s fine. If the senior is doing big things, the second has to take the back seat. Marotta could still contribute, as it was the four-woman rotation with Anderson, Lauren Van Kleunen and Camryn Taylor that made Marquette so dangerous on the glass last season. Marotta was a big part of it as she ranked 120th in the country on the offensive rebound rate and 339th in the defensive rebound rate, according to Her Hoop Stats. If Altia Anderson is gone, it means that, similar to LVK, Marotta has to play a few big minutes for the newbies to settle in. If it doesn’t, it may mean that it is a triple rotation at 4 and 5 on the floor. That will likely go well, but it will take very careful play from Marotta to make sure she can stay on the ground as well. Marotta fouled three times last season and her foul rate was below the country’s 20%. At least to get the season started – and that’s important when Big East plays from Game 3 of the year – Marotta has to reach the end of the deal.

The good news is that 8/3/3 is a pretty good stat for a newbie. The bad news is that prior to last season, Jordan King was voted Preseason Newbie of the Year, and while Villanova’s Maddy Siegrist was the clear winner of the postseason repeat of that award, King never came close. In fact, she didn’t even reach the Big East’s all-freshman team at the end of the season. A lot has to do with the fact that there are plenty of newbies to choose from, but that 35% who shot off the field and 27% who shot from a long distance did King no favors either.

If the worst thing you can say about someone is that they didn’t get a shot at Freshman of the Year, that’s actually not a problem. King did well last year if you throw away expectations for the preseason. Yes, the shooting is an issue, but at the end of the day it didn’t have much of an impact on Marquette as the Golden Eagles were still on their way to the NCAA tournament anyway. King clearly has the trust of the coaching staff because if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have logged more than 30 minutes in Marquette’s three Big East tournament games last season. That hadn’t been the case two weeks earlier when she was against Butler and Villanova for less than 20 minutes. So you can see this was more awkward than anything else.

This season, King clearly plays an important role on this team, especially with Isabelle Spingola leaving the wing. Not very different from last year, Marquette needs experienced hands with four newcomers and only three upper-class women. This is king. But it has to be better. She’s going to have to do more shots this season, and that means she absolutely has to finish more of them. If Marquette is to play through the interior again this season, King must be able to pose a threat on the floor in order to stretch the floor. If she continues to shoot 27% from a long distance, the teams will know they are not respecting the shot at that point, and that will cause problems for the Golden Eagles doing what they do best.

With 24 appearances a year, Claire Kaifes appeared frequently in a game for the Golden Eagles last season. However, I think we can safely say that her impact on the squad was minimal at best, as she ended the year with a total of 201 minutes played, 25 points scored and 34 rebounds accumulated. However, her minutes increased as the season progressed, and that’s good news for the Kansaserin native.

I’m not sure what role she’s playing on the team this season as Kaifes didn’t have to do anything special for Marquette on the floor last year. There are a few minutes left after Isabelle Spingola’s departure, but the ability to shoot the ball is essential for this job. Kaifes missed her final four attempts of the season, and while that sounds like a ridiculous review, those four attempts were lost after Jan.. February spread over nine games. Again, she wasn’t asked to carry an offensive charge for Megan Duffy’s team, but neither did she show the potential to be able to pick up either side of the range.

Can she? Sure maybe! Will she argue for minutes with two of her classmates and two newbies? Pretty sure.

If you’re new to all 32 games and an average of 14 minutes per game, you’ll be pretty good. That was Nirel Lougbo’s season last year and she carried the minutes behind Selena Lott and Jordan King sent in the back seat last season.

It wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops either, as you can see from her shot numbers. She also flipped the ball way too much, posting a rate of 38. 2%. Literally in the bottom 1% of the country. Not good.

But this is the second year, and Lougbo’s turnover rate was actually down during the league game last year. Not much, just 36. 6% instead of north of 38%, but down is down so we take what we get. I’m also a little concerned that « take what we get » might be the extent of what Lougbo can offer the squad. Sure, much like Claire Kaifes, Lougbo wasn’t supposed to do much for the Golden Eagles last season. Like Kaifes, Lougbo didn’t show that much either. She had an average of 14 minutes per game, but not even two shot attempts per game, not even during the conference game. It is difficult to say what will come of a player in a new season if nothing has happened other than chewing minutes to give teammates a break from the year before. With Rose Nkumu on deck to play a few point guard minutes this year, Lougbo has to carve out a niche that is bigger than just « being able to cover a person’s shift at short notice ». ”

I’m sorry, I mislabeled this category. This is the BUDDING FAN FAVORITE Camryn Taylor that we are talking about here. I’m still shocked that she wasn’t a unanimous choice for the Big East’s all-freshman team.

Taylor was the big surprise in the four-headed monster Marquette put in the Post last season. Lauren Van Kleunen was the player who got the chance to play a bigger role, while it was fun to see Altia Anderson actually get the chance to show off what she’s doing on the floor and Chloe Marotta filled the other two mostly off on time. Taylor was the newcomer to the four, however, and in all honesty, the whole experiment won’t work if she doesn’t do what she did. The 9. 3 points per game was actually the fourth best on the team, only behind Van Kleunen, Selena Lott and Isabelle Spingola. I’m a little surprised at how low the rebound sum is, but I think I have an explanation there. Taylor ranked 327th in the country last season on the offensive rebound rate per Her Hoop Stats. So since I remember all of the Peoria’s native setbacks, I remember many of her setbacks.

She was fine at other things too. HHS has Taylor in the top 500 block rate, which speaks for her defensive skills, but she is also in the top 500 in the turnover rate. If you’ve got a newbie messing it up inside and not coughing a lot even with a top 200 usage rate, then you have something to work with in the future. I don’t know if Megan Duffy is ready to offend Taylor, but her athletic prowess suggests she can do more than just clean glass and do the other dirty chores inside. I’m really looking forward to what Taylor has in store for the second year.

Given that Taylor Valladay lost her high school season to a knee injury and spent 2019-20 on the pitch for Marquette in a knee brace, it’s no surprise that she didn’t have much of an impact on the team as a freshman. Valladay saw action in just 20 games and only managed nine minutes in two of them: a 78-56 win over Milwaukee and a 61-47 loss at Villanova. She was mostly there for minutes here and there, and that’s fine.

What can you expect this year? No idea! I’ve said a million times that Marquette needs to figure out how to fill Isabelle Spingola’s minutes, but Valladay seems more of a point guard guy than a wing. Can she step forward and allow Selena Lott and / or Jordan King to move closer to a wing point? Can Valladay stay on the depth map before newbie Rose Nkumu? After only 86 minutes of action a year ago, there are only questions to be asked and unrealized potential.

Marquette Golden Eagles Women’s Basketball, Marquette University, Big East Conference, Megan Duffy, Basketball