With every push forward, the target kept moving. The gap shrank, but it never quite disappeared.
That was the theme of the Marquette women’s basketball’s (8-5, 2-2 Big East) 73-66 loss to the St. John’s Red Storm (12-3, 2-2 Big East) on Monday night, playing most of the game from behind in a contest where neither team led by more than the winning margin.
Marquette tied the game at 14 late in the first quarter, but St. John’s moved the target with a layup in the final seconds. Again at the end of the opening half, right after junior guard Halle Vice made a layup to cut the deficit to one, the Red Storm grew it back with a 3-pointer to beat the halftime buzzer.
After trading leads in the third, Marquette pulled within one point three times in the fourth quarter and tied the game once, 60-60, thanks to a 3-pointer and layup from junior guard Jordan Meulemans. But, like it had all night, St. John’s kept widening the gap, this time in the most crucial minutes.
With 2:32 remaining, forward Daniela Abies fought for an offensive board, won, and scored a put-back layup, the ultimate go-ahead score, giving the Red Storm a 67-64 lead.
In the minutes that followed, Marquette went 3:03 without scoring, shooting 0-for-4 from the field. That drought, paired with St. John’s’ steady free-throw making, kept the target out of reach and put the Golden Eagles into the loss column at home for the third time under head coach Cara Consuegra.
“There were some really great moments in the fourth quarter where [the crowd was] loud, and I thought that would be able to boost us,” Consuegra said. “And we just really weren’t able to do that.”
Both teams went pound-for-pound on the stat sheet, mirroring each other from across the court. St. John’s shot 26-for-61 from the field. Marquette went 28-for-61. St. John’s made 6-of-17 shots from beyond the arc. Marquette, same exact clip.
With the margin for error ever-so-slim, Consuegra said early mistakes — including six missed layups in the first quarter — proved to be the difference.
“[Those] missed opportunities really shot us in the foot,” Consuegra said.
The biggest difference came at the charity stripe. There, where they scored the game’s final four points to ice the victory, the Red Storm were 15-for-21 (71.4%) overall. The Golden Eagles, though, made only 4 of their 8 attempts.
Marquette had four scorers finish the game in double-digits, led by Skylar Forbes for the seventh time this season, notching 16 points. Jaidynn Mason, in her return to the lineup after an illness sidelined her for the Golden Eagles’ last game, an 86-43 drubbing of Truman State on Dec. 20, scored 14 points in 25 minutes.
Graduate student guard Lee Volker posted only six points on 2-of-8 shooting, including 0-for-2 from deep.
On the opposing bench, St. John’s guard and Milwaukee native Beautiful Waheed put an exclamation point on her hometown showdown, scoring eight of her 14 points in the decisive fourth quarter. Waheed led the Red Storm in scoring as one of five players to post double-digits on the scorecard.
“We let those kids get to their spots,” Consuegra said. “And you can’t do that — not in the Big East, not at this level.”
Sitting at a .500 line through four games of Big East play, the Golden Eagles will shift their focus to 2026 with a New Year’s Day battle at the Xavier Musketeers (8-5, 1-3 Big East). Perhaps then, Marquette can hit the target’s bullseye.
“We have some people who are really good at keeping their composure and really good at making sure that we’re steady throughout the rest of the game,” Forbes said.
This story was written by Lance Schulteis. He can be reached at lance.schulteis@marquette.edu.