The Golden Eagles are looking to be a little bit junior heavy in Cara Consuegra’s first season on the sidelines.
We’ve got two new Marquette women’s basketball players to talk about here today, but first I want to swing around and grab a quote from new head coach Cara Consuegra on a previous commitment. We got a press release about three new transfers on Wednesday, but one of them — Jada Bediako — was already known to us from earlier in May. Here’s what Consuegra had to say about the Georgia Tech freshman:
“We are excited to bring Jada to Milwaukee,” Consuegra said. “Jada has valuable experience in international play with Team Canada and immediately brings tremendous depth to our frontcourt.”
That moves us along to new business! There were two commitments in rapid-ish fire fashion on Monday and Tuesday, with Syracuse guard Kennedi Perkins announcing on Monday evening and Southern Illinois guard Jaidynn Mason doing the same on Tuesday. We’ll go in chronological order…..
Kennedi Perkins
Here’s Consuegra’s quote:
“We can’t wait to welcome Kennedi to Milwaukee,” Consuegra said. “Kennedi has tremendous college experience and is a true competitor who will help our team in many ways at the guard position.”
To a certain extent, this is a move closer to home for Perkins, who spent two years in upstate New York. The 5’6” guard hails from Bolingbrook in the Chicago suburbs, and given that she played backup to Dyaisha Fair for the past two years and Fair is now with the Las Vegas Aces in the WNBA, you would think playing time would open up for Perkins….. and it has, just in Milwaukee, just up the road (so to speak) from her high school.
She appeared in 52 games for the Orange over the past two seasons, and even with a three-ish minute per game boost as a sophomore, her stats stayed relatively the same. 2.8 points as a freshman, 2.6 as a sophomore. 1.0 and 1.1 rebounds for the same years, but assists bumped up nicely in Year Two, going from 0.3 to 1.0 per game. There are questions to be asked about Perkins’ shooting abilities, as she never did better than 43% from the field in either season with Syracuse, and she has just 24 three-point attempts in two years. She went 4-for-9 as a freshman, but just 3-for-15 as a sophomore. Her turnover rate is a little bit on the high side, going north of 21% in both seasons, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens under Consuegra’s direction.
Jaidynn Mason
Here’s what Consuegra had to say:
“We are thrilled Jaidynn is coming to Marquette,” Consuegra said. “Jaidynn is a dynamic guard who scores and defends at a very high level, and we can’t wait to see her play her game in the BIG EAST.”
Hailing from Blue Springs, Missouri, which is on the east side of Kansas City, Mason spent two seasons on the roster at Southern Illinois. She appeared in 31 games with four starts as a freshman, and made her way onto the Missouri Valley All-Freshman Team at the end of the 2022-23 season. Mason averaged 7.5 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game, and added nearly two steals per outing on the defensive end, too. The 5’9” guard was mostly a starter this past year, getting the nod in 21 of her 23 appearances as SIU went 11-20. Mason jumped up to nearly 30 minutes per game and averaged 14.0 points, 3.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists, and 2.7 steals.
She was one of the highest usage rate players in the country as a sophomore according to Her Hoop Stats, ranking #35 in the country there and only 15 people shot more two point attempts per game, but she did also land at #108 in assist rate as well. Across two seasons, Mason has only attempted 65 three-pointers, and that’s kind of good news, as she’s a career 18.5% shooter.
And now, the brand new freshly updated scholarship chart!
That brings Marquette to 11 players on the roster for 2024-25. Given that we got one press release for Consuegra’s signee at Charlotte and a Charlotte player transferring, and then another for these three women, I suspect that this might be the end of the line in roster building for next season. 11 players is enough to get you through 5-on-5 in practice, so I don’t know if Consuegra needs to go much deeper than this.
In addition to that, I think it’s probably a good idea to not take any more players with two years of eligibility, as there are now five women who will be juniors next fall. Losing five at a time after the 2025-26 season is a pretty big dropoff when you’re rebuilding the roster stability to a certain extent, and making that worse seems like a bad idea. It’s also seeming likely that Consuegra will play 2024-25 without any freshmen on the roster. That opens up the door to taking post-freshman year transfers almost exclusively next year in addition to whatever high school recruits Marquette adds. The roster is going to need a little bit of rebalancing after this season, but that’s an issue for Future Cara to worry about for now.