Quinnipiac has earned its third NCAA tournament bid in five seasons. It will be playing the fifth seeded Marquette Golden Eagles in Coral Gables, Florida.
Marquette finished third in the Big East but went on to win the Big East tournament over the top seeded DePaul Blue Demons 86-78.
The selection committee awarded Marquette the fifth seed, which is its’ highest in school history. This will be Marquette’s first time in the NCAA tournament since the 2010-2011 season.
Marquette knows that to avoid an upset, they need to play “Marquette basketball.”
“Well, I think when I got the job at Marquette, I knew the style that I wanted to play, and I knew we wanted to be up tempo. I knew it was going to take a while for them to get to the pace we want to play and understand the system that we’re trying to create,” Marquette head coach Carolyn Kieger said.
Marquette has been playing with a goal the past two months and that goal was to get to the NCAA tournament for its lone senior McKayla Yentz.
The Golden Eagles will look to get out on the fast break and push the pace right from the opening tip against the Bobcats.
“We are going to set the tone in the first five minutes of the game. Our whole game plan is to play fast. That’s what we have been doing all season, and that’s what we are going to continue to do throughout the tournament,” Marquette sophomore guard Natisha Hiedeman said.
Kieger knows that her team needs to remain focused if they want to beat Quinnipiac.
“But like I told the team yesterday, for us, this is a business trip for us. It is not spring break. We are not coming down to Miami to have some fun. This is our first NCAA tournament as a group and we’re going to enjoy it, and have a lot of fun, but we also want to get to work,” Kieger said.
Marquette has a very young and inexperienced roster. It has one senior, two juniors, seven sophomores and four freshmen. Despite its youth, Marquette’s goal was to reach the NCAA tournament.
“Obviously last year was a lot of learning experience. They (sophomores) played significant minutes,” Kieger said. “So I don’t really consider this group sophomores in terms of the amount of minutes that they’ve logged. And our goal all season long was to get to the NCAA tournament.”
Natisha Hiedeman had a solid performance when she scored 28 points on 6-11 shooting from the field in the Big East championship game against DePaul. Hiedeman’s 28 points were two shy of her career high.
The player to watch for the Marquette Golden Eagles will be sophomore forward Erika Davenport who is a double-double machine. She averaged 13 points per game along with 9.3 rebounds per game.
The other player Quinnipiac will need to key in on defensively is sophomore guard Allazia Blockton. She led the Big East in scoring, averaging 17 points per game.
Marquette is going to look to get out on the fast break as much as possible. Quinnipiac’s forwards are going to have to be on their toes, as Marquette’s forwards will look to run the floor and get easy layups on the fast break.
Marquette will be a tough matchup as they will look to pass the ball into the post as much as possible but they also have the ability to stretch the floor with their outside shooting.
Quinnipiac comes in off winning its second Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament title since they joined the league in 2013-14.
Quinnipiac had to change its game plan midway through the season when junior forward Brittany Johnson tore her ACL. Quinnipiac has shortened its bench to eight players instead of using the “Gold Rush” which is five players in and five players out.
The Bobcats achieved their goal of winning the regular season and postseason MAAC titles. Despite its success, Quinnipiac did not have any players on the first-team all MAAC and no players won individual awards.
Aryn McClure, who is Quinnipiac’s highest recruit in school history, had a career day in the MAAC title game against the Rider Broncs. McClure scored a career high 28 points in the championship game.
McClure having a career day just shows how unpredictable Quinnipiac is; you never know who is going to be the leading scorer.
McClure, Sarah Shewan and Paula Strautmane will all have to be ready to run the floor with the Marquette forwards but their biggest challenge will be containing Erika Davenport down low. They will need to be ready to box out at all times as Davenport will look to crash the boards on either ends of the court.
Marquette guard Natisha Heideman gave Quinnipiac some extra motivation when she said earlier this week that she had never heard of the school.
Not a lot of people do know about Quinnipiac but this is nothing new for Carly Fabbri and her teammates.
“I think it’s nothing new to us. I think a lot of teams that we do play from bigger conferences, they do have trouble pronouncing our name. They don’t know where we are from, even though we have been a mid-major power over the last couple of years,” Quinnipiac guard Carly Fabbri said. “I think if they don’t know who we are, they will tomorrow.”
Fabbri had a bit of a resurgence over the past couple of regular season games and her hot streak continued into the conference tournament. She scored a season high 14 points in the MAAC tournament semifinals against Iona. Her success in the tournament earned her a spot on the all-MAAC tournament team.
Adily Martucci will be the key player for the Bobcats on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. She will most likely be guarding Marquette’s and the Big East’s leading scorer Allazia Blockton.
Not only will Martucci be asked to hold Blockton in check but she will also be asked to put up double-digit points. Martucci has scored in double-digits in seven straight games. This will be nothing new for Martucci who held Tori Jankoska of Michigan State to 14 points while tying her career high with 20 points. Jankoska was the second leading scorer in the Big Ten with 22.5 points per game.
The biggest problem that Quinnipiac faces is that they get off to slow starts and they have the ability to comeback against MAAC opponents but it becomes a lot harder when they face teams who come from bigger conferences like the Big East.
“I think because of our slow starts, we need to really change that and start very hot on offense. And I think the big thing about doing that is just staying confident in our own shots,” Martucci said.
The thing that may be surprising about this game is the fact that the lower seed is actually the team with the most experience. No players on Marquette have never played in the NCAA tournament but seven out of the sixteen players on Quinnipiac have experience in the NCAA tournament that they can pass on to their teammates who do not have that experience.
With Quinnipiac becoming a mid-major powerhouse over the past couple of seasons they are no longer happy to be in the tournament, they want to win at least two games and advance to the Sweet 16.
“Reflecting back to the first and the second time, you get this excitement and (you are) happy to just be here. And as the years go on, and your goals and aspirations change for your program, and within the players,” Quinnipiac head coach Tricia Fabbri said. “So this is the expectation from them. They’ve worked extremely hard to get here. This is the moment they want.”
Quinnipiac comes in on a 10 game winning streak, while Marquette is currently on an eight game winning streak.
The winner of the Quinnipiac-Marquette game will advance to play the winner of the Miami-Florida Gulf Coast game on Monday.
