Good morning Cyclone Nation and Happy Feast Week to all who celebrate! The Cyclone women are in action today and Sunday as they’ll look to pick up a pair of wins down in Fort Myers, Florida at the Coconut Hoops Tournament in the Blue Heron Division. In their division they’ll take on the Marquette Golden Eagles who currently sit at 4-1 on the year and do have a win over the Wisconsin Badgers.
Marquette only scores about 70 points per game while allowing about 61.5, but they did give up 90 earlier this year to the Minnesota Golden Gophers in their lone loss. They’re led in scoring by senior guard Lee Volker who scores about 14 points per game, but they can certainly mix it up as they’ve got four players scoring at least 12 points per game. This Golden Eagles team missed out on the Big Dance last year with their 21-11 (12-6) record out of the Big East, but they had made it to March the two years previous to that and were also ranked in the Top 25 at some point in the year in both 2023 and 2024, so the Cyclones can’t overlook them to the other side of the bracket that features two other Tournament teams from recent years.
We’ll dive a little more into the Cyclones’ next opponent following their game today, but they’ll either take on the Indiana Hoosiers or the Gonzaga Bulldogs… and unlike the men’s Players Era “festival” from this week, this one is a bracket format with the winners and losers playing in the championship and 3rd place games respectively.
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The keys for Iowa State in this one will be fairly similar to what they have been the majority of the year. Continue to limit the turnovers and continue to distribute the ball to either your open shooters on the outside if they double-team Audi Crooks, or feed #55 down low if they don’t. Marquette turns the ball over significantly more than the Cyclones have to this point in the year, and if that trend should continue, I like the Cyclones’ chances to get another blowout win. If not, Marquette shoots the three ball at about the same percentage as Iowa State (36%) albeit at much less volume (111 attempts vs 178).
Marquette has turned it over more times than Iowa State has in two fewer games and the Cyclones need to keep that up as they leave the state of Iowa for the first time this season.
They’ll tip of in a little under a half an hour on FLO College at 10am.
