The Golden Eagles head out east looking for a fourth straight win in a game that has big time resume value for both teams.
On January 9th, ESPN’s Charlie Creme put out a new bracketology for women’s college basketball, one that we will not judge harshly because it is after the first of the year. He lists both Marquette and Seton Hall has Next Four Out there with the Golden Eagles one spot in front of the Pirates, and we should probably note that his Last Team In is Villanova.
On January 7th, The IX’s Matthew Walter put out a bracketology that has both Marquette and Seton Hall as Next Four Out teams. Here, the order is flipped around with the Pirates in front of the Golden Eagles.
On Monday afternoon as I type this out, Marquette ranks #61 in the country in BartTorvik.com’s measurement of Wins Above Bubble. Seton Hall? #50.
Over in the NET on Monday? Marquette is #55, Seton Hall is #46.
Neither team has a terrific non-conference resume that’s going help push them into the NCAA tournament, and let’s be honest about it: Big East play is littered with Quadrant 4 games, 11 of them in total for Marquette.
This one 40 minute chunk of the season is not going to by itself push either of these two teams into the NCAA tournament in March. It’s not critical, it’s not must-win, not for either team. But I’m pretty sure it counts as pivotal, and this particular version of MU/SHU this season has a little extra value for the Golden Eagles since this is the one on the road for them. If Marquette can hold to the form that has earned them three straight wins coming into Wednesday night, then I feel pretty good about their chances of earning a second notable victory in the last three games.
Big East Game #8: at Seton Hall Pirates (11-5, 5-2 Big East)
Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2026
Time: 6pm Central
Location: Walsh Gym, South Orange, New Jersey
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats:Stat Broadcast
Bluesky Updates:@AnonymousEagle, but not until after 6:30, that’s how it goes sometimes.
Marquette is 21-12 all time against Seton Hall. The Golden Eagles have won four of the last five games in the series, including each of the last two visits to Walsh Gym.
We have to respect what Seton Hall head coach Tony Bozzella did with his team’s non-conference schedule, even if it did mean that they played just one game in the first 11 days of the season. That still led the Pirates to challenging themselves with visits to Princeton and NC State, as well as a home game against Columbia. Yeah, it’s not a fun time that SHU went 0-3 in those games with a combined margin of 13 points, but they still took a swing at building a non-conference resume worth standing up and noticing. It’s possible that those three games helped the Pirates be ready to hold court against Auburn immediately in the wake of their one point loss to Columbia.
Big East play has gone about as you might expect for the Pirates, relative to everything else going on in the league. They’re 5-2, and the losses are exactly what the standings right now tell you they are: at Villanova and at Connecticut. The margin against the Huskies is not a useful piece of information, but the Wildcats game is, as Seton Hall lost by 17 at The Finn. Giving up 72 points isn’t the problem there, but scoring just 55 points is, especially when paired with getting just 58 last time out on the road against Providence. They got there in two different ways, shooting it poorly against Villanova and and then adding turning it over more than 27% of the time against the Friars to one of their worst three-point shooting performances of the season.
Marquette’s path to a win in South Orange involves finding a way to slow down Savannah Catalon and Mariana Valenzuela. Those two are Seton Hall’s top two scorers, putting up 13.5 and 12.4 points per game respectively. They are two very different players even if their scoring is so close together and they both shoot over 38% from behind the arc. Catalon is a 5’8” guard who fires off more than half of her shots from behind the three-point line while Valenzuela is a 6’2” forward who also leads the Pirates in rebounds. Somehow, it’s Valenzuela who is actually the more dangerous shooter at 41%, but she’s taking less than four attempts per game, less than half her shots overall.
We can’t ignore Jada Eads here, especially because she has missed Seton Hall’s last two games. She leads the Pirates in assists at 4.2 per game and chips in 11.7 points, too. The Pirates said she was day-to-day when she missed the UConn game on January 3rd, but then she missed the PC game on the 8th, too.
This game may come down to whether or not Marquette can cash in their three-point looks. The Pirates have one of the worst three-point attempt rate defenses in the country according to BartTorvik.com and the Golden Eagles are the fourth most accurate three-point shooting team. MU doesn’t lean on their shooting, floating around the middle of the country in attempt rate, but if SHU is leaving MU’s shooters open, whether or not those shots go down might be the difference between two teams that are not that statistically different otherwise.
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Category: General Sports
