In the preseason, Marquette women’s basketball head coach Cara Consuegra tabbed Jaidynn Mason as the team’s most improved player.
After the season-opener, Consuegra added another accolade to her resume: “X-factor.”
That’s because the senior point guard ended the Golden Eagles’ 89-57 victory over Winthrop with a team-high 25 points, seven rebounds and five assists. Her 25 points marked the most she’s scored in a Marquette jersey, seven more than her previous high against Creighton last season.
“I thought she was phenomenal,” Consuegra said. “She’s our most improved and she’s also our X-factor.
“Obviously our Big 3 — when you talk about Sky (Forbes), Halle (Vice) and Lee (Volker) — get a lot of attention. But I really feel like we go as Jaidynn Mason goes.”
She wasted no time getting going, scoring her first points from the free-throw line in under a minute and finishing the opening quarter with a team-most seven points.
“She was aggressive from the start, really pushed the pace for us,” Consuegra said. “Just set the tone and that’s what we need from her all the time.”
But Mason was just getting started.
She went into the locker room at halftime with 13 points, going 2-for-3 from the field (all from deep) in the second period. She dropped eight more in the third frame and grabbed another four in the fourth to reach her new scoring record as a Golden Eagle of 25.
It was her full-game consistency that really stuck out to Consuegra. Mason was able to start and play an impactful, tied-for-team-leading 23 minutes across all four quarters — something that was not always the case last year.
“We’d have to take her out for stretches of the game,” Consuegra said. “She would just kind of hit that wall, and she just wasn’t in good enough shape to go through that wall.”
Monday, though, that was not an issue, something Mason could feel herself.
“For sure,” she said about being able to handle a bigger workload, “putting more focus on being in better shape than I was last year.”
The second piece of Mason’s game which made Consuegra comfortable calling her both Marquette’s most improved and Monday’s X-factor was also on display: her shooting.
Mason went 7-for-13 from the floor (53.8%), 2-for-5 (40%) on 3-pointers and a perfect 9-of-9 from the charity stripe. Last season, she averaged 45.7% overall and 25% from beyond the arc.
In order to increase her old numbers to what they were Monday, over the summer Mason spent time in the gym daily. Whether it was set workouts with assistant coach Khadijah Rushdan or time alone honing her craft, both she and Consuegra described it as a priority.
On Monday, that work helped her morph from a speedy, shifty ball-handler to a speedy, shifty ball-handler that posed a threat from deep.
“It’s a big benefit,” Mason said, “because when they come up on me, I can drop past them.”
Having scored nearly triple the points than her average of 8.8 per game last season, Mason hinted at what could in store during the rest of her senior season.
“She’s the person who sets the tone for us defensively and offensively as well, she moves at the speed of light,” Forbes said. “Her impact today was incredible, I expect nothing less of Jaidynn.”
Now the world will wait to see if Mason can replicate as the “X-factor” in the Golden Eagles’ next match Saturday at 2 p.m. CST against the Wisconsin Badgers.
This story was written by Sofie Hanrahan. She can be reached @Sofia.hanrahan@marquette.edu or on X @SofieHanrahanMU.