• MU Women Win Close Game, Faces In-State Rivals Next

    You have to give the Marquette women's basketball team a lot of credit for gutting out a tough week on the road recently and coming home a little tired. They looked sluggish in the first half of their home game, Dec. 1, against Fordham, at the Al McGuire Center, but they won, 51-48.

    That win came on the heels of their 77-74 overtime win at South Dakota State in Brookings, S.D., Nov. 28, so you can understand that some of their energy was sapped when they were on the court against the Rams.

    "This time of the year," Marquette coach Terri Mitchell said, "it's about finding ways to win as we figure out who we are."

    The Golden Eagles let Fordham hang around throughout the entire game, and it was a missed three-point shot by the Rams in the end that gave MU a sigh of relief and a 4-2 record.

    A torn ACL injury will sideline junior guard Gabi Minix for the rest of the season. The next person to step in had to grow up in a hurry. "There were moments that Brooklyn Pumroy, we're putting so much on her as a freshman, when Gabi Minix went down . . . The master plan was that she would learn from Gabi and be out there with Gabi. Now we're just throwing it all on her and say, 'Do it,' " Mitchell said.

    Even though it might not be a good time to throw Pumroy into the fire, there's a feeling that if she wasn't ready to step up, then she wouldn't be at Marquette. Now the coaching staff expects her to run the offense, direct the defense, and, oh yeah, score every once in a while, as her 10 points in 36 minutes against Fordham indicated. Pumroy averaged about 30 minutes in the last four games entering Saturday's game since Minix went down.

    Now we get to the good news and bad news for the Golden Eagles. They don't have to leave the state for the rest of this month, but their next two games are against their in-state rivals, which will educate the newcomers on the team who don't know the intensity that rival games bring.

    "It's going to be an outstanding week," Mitchell said. "Anytime that you play teams in-state, there's something extra you bring. Sometimes you have to explain that to freshman if they're not from the state, you know, Brooke (Pumroy) is from (Fairborn) Ohio.

    "We all have the in-state games that we are excited about. Two programs (Wisconsin and UW-Green Bay) that are playing extremely well. Any in-state game, you just bring that something to it. And we have to prepare our players to manage their emotions. You do those things and you give yourselves a fighting chance."