What Does Cara Consuegra See In Her 2024-25 Roster?

Last week, Ben Steele of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel got a chance to sit down with new Marquette women’s basketball coach Cara Consuegra and talk about how things are going since she was hired in April. There’s this article talking about scouting her returning players and the philosophy going into building around them as well as building her coaching staff, and then there’s this one talking about each of the new additions.

There was one line in the first article that jumped out at me and made me start to question everything that Consuegra told Steele, at least in regards to her players. This is something that’s in the article, but not as a direct quote from Consuegra. We can still treat it as something Consuegra said because why else would Steele have written it?

Forbes’ length and shooting ability will make her an important player as a sophomore.

That was my jumping off point for writing everything you’re about to read, because “great shooter” was not the first thing that came to my mind about Skylar Forbes’ freshman campaign under the direction of former head coach Megan Duffy. Let’s do some digging, shall we?

Skylar Forbes ended up shooting 47.5% from the field overall last season, which is in the 84th percentile in the country. That’s fine. She shot 54% on two-pointers, which is in the 89th percentile. Great. Maybe that’s the point that Consuegra was making.

However, when you see the phrase “shooting ability,” you’re not thinking about someone excelling at the Mikan Drill. Forbes was 3-for-20 from long range in 2023-24, including 0-9 outside of MU’s 20 games against Big East opponents including the conference tournament. In those 20 Big East contests, Forbes shot just 50.9% on two pointers. That’s fine, it’s just not 54%, that’s all.

On one hand, Forbes shot all those three-pointers….. on the other hand, she did not make very many of them. I’m willing to believe that Consuegra is seeing something in workouts since being hired that leads her to say this out loud in front of people, particularly people who are going to publish her sentiments in the newspaper…… but until we see it happen in November, it doesn’t make it true. The flipside of that is wondering what Megan Duffy was doing for four months while Forbes wasn’t getting her shot to fall if she was seeing the shots go down in practice.

Here’s a quote from Consuegra while talking about junior college transfer Ayuen Akot, but it’s about returning players:

Who’s going to knock down shots for us? We have some people that can do it. Abbey can do it, Lee can do it.

Abbey Cracknell shot 2-for-8 from long range last season. A little unfair to her, because Duffy only put her on the court for just 160 minutes in 21 contests. However, she shot 28.4% on four three-point attempts per game in 2021-22 with Gulf Coast State, and 31.6% on more than five attempts per game in 2022-23. Better than 25%, obviously, but still not a productive shooter, because that’s below the efficiency break-even point of 33.3%.

Lee Volker has played 1,061 Division 1 college basketball minutes in 71 games across three seasons at Duke and Marquette. She is shooting, in total, 6-for-49 while averaging less than 0.7 attempts per game. That’s 12.2%. The word “can” is doing an awful lot of work here. I’m not going to say that she can’t do it, I’m saying no one has seen it yet in three years.

This provides a nice transition here since Consuegra was complimenting Ayuen Akot’s shooting ability.

OK, we need a pure shooter that nobody is going to come off of. If we’re tying to run a ball screen, we need somebody in the corner that people are not going to come off and help off of. She does that very, very well and she has length.

I’m willing to believe that she’s a very good catch-and-shoot corner shooter. But Akot shot just 33% last season for Frank Phillips College. That was on seven attempts per game, and she led that team in total attempts. If they needed her shooting it and she took a few extra ill-advised shots, then so be it. If she can do better than 33% because she’s part of an offense that spreads the shooting out a bit more, that’s great.

Here’s what Consuegra said about Olivia Porter:

I think what Liv brings is she’s just solid. If you just watch her, she’s just solid on offense. She makes the right plays at the right time. To the right people, whether that’s herself or others. And then she’s just solid defensively, she can guard anybody on the court. Well, probably not bigs, but any guards on the court. She just stays down. She doesn’t reach. She doesn’t get undisciplined. She’s just solid. She’s one of those kids that you rely on, that you can trust.

Porter finished her season in Charlotte with a turnover rate of 31.8%, one of the worst turnover rates in the country, especially given how many minutes she was playing. With that said, Porter was #345 in the country in assist rate, and she shot 36% on three-pointers. When she didn’t turn it over, it was usually a pretty good outcome. Well, maybe not when she drove to the rack, as she shot less than 41% on two-pointers.

On the defensive end, Porter ranked in the 87th percentile in defensive win shares according to Her Hoop Stats. That number dips to 71st percentile when you make it win shares per 40 minutes, but that’s still somewhere between solid and strong.

Porter is the lone incoming transfer from Charlotte on the roster, so that scouting report is the only one in this entire rundown about a player that Consuegra has actually coached. It’s coming from a much deeper understand of who Porter is as a player….. so it’s a little bit surprising that she said that Porter is solid given her turnover problem.

Consuegra on Jaidynn Mason:

Her quickness, her speed, she was I think top three in steals in her league at her previous school. She just brings a different level, especially on the defensive end that we didn’t have.

Mason was #2 in steals per game in 18 Missouri Valley Conference games in 2023-24, but more importantly to the point, she was #24 in the country overall. That works out to #33 in steal rate, which is still outstanding. You’ll notice that Consuegra didn’t mention her offense there, and with an effective field goal percentage of 35.8%, you understand why. She’s solid with the ball, both in terms of assists and limiting turnovers, but the shooting is a question mark heading into the teeth of a Big East schedule.

Consuegra on Jada Bediako:

“We didn’t have any back-to-the-basket size. Skyler, she wants to face up. She wants to shoot the three. She wants to drive. Same with Halle. Charia, she can bang a little bit, but we just felt like, again, that was a gap that we had. We didn’t have anybody that was, like, get in the paint, get two feet in there, feed the ball there when we need it, be a defensive presence. And bring that size and strength in the paint, so that was the gap that she filled.”

We’re not going to draw any conclusions from Bediako’s 57 minutes of action at Georgia Tech this past season, but I don’t disagree with the general consensus of the scouting report on Skylar Forbes, Halle Vice, and Charia Smith. Very limited sample sizes on Vice and Smith, of course, but the vibes seem accurate. If Bediako can do those things and do them well, then great.

Consuegra on Kennedi Perkins:

“Another quick guard. Quick, athletic. Can come off the ball screen really well. Makes good decisions. Also has some great athleticism defensively. I think she’s going to be a really good on-ball defender for us as well. She can play the 1, too, so she can play either slot, which is good.”

Turnover rate of 22.6%, bottom third in the country. I have to disagree with the “makes good decisions” part, at least from what we saw from Perkins at Syracuse. I suppose there’s a certain amount of “Perkins’ decision was actually a good one but it didn’t work out and it’s a turnover charged to her” in that rate, but she has to improve on that pronto.

I don’t want to say I’m unnerved by some of these scouting reports and quotes from Cara Consuegra, that would be wildly overstating things. However, the fact of the matter is that often times, she’s holding a perspective that’s wildly different than what we’ve actually seen happen on a basketball court in games that count. It’s Consuegra’s job to maximize her players’ best qualities and minimize their worst tendencies, so we’ll see what she puts together when the Golden Eagles hit the court for the first time this fall.