In the preseason, Marquette women’s basketball coach Cara Consuegra said 5-foot-6 point guard Jaidynn Mason was the team’s most improved player.
The senior showed off those refined skills in the Golden Eagles’ season opener on Nov. 3 at the Al McGuire Center, with Mason putting up 25 points, seven rebounds and five assists as MU rolled to an 89-57 victory over Winthrop.
“I thought she was phenomenal,” Consuegra said. “She’s our most improved and she’s also our X-factor.
“Obviously our Big 3 – when you talk about Sky (Forbes), Halle (Vice) and Lee (Volker) – get a lot of attention. But I really feel like we go as Jaidynn Mason goes, and I thought she was aggressive from the start.
“Really pushed the pace for us. Obviously got to the free-throw line. Just set the tone, that’s what we need from here all the time.”
Here are other takeaways from MU’s victory:
Jaidynn Mason efficient on offense
Mason is a shifty ball-hander, and was relentless attacking the basket. She made all nine of her free-throw attempts.
She also was 2 for 5 on 3-pointers. That was her focus in the off-season.
“Just to open up the floor and create more scoring opportunities for me and my teammates,” Mason said.
Mason also never slowed down, with Consuegra citing her conditioning taking a big leap from last season.
“That was an area where last year, we’d have to take her out for stretches of the game,” Consuegra said. “She’d just hit that wall, and she just wasn’t in good enought shape to go through that wall.”
Cara Consuegra likes getting up 3-pointers
Becoming a better 3-point shooting team was a goal for Consuegra after the team hit 30.7% from deep last season.
MU put up 30 of its 64 shots against Winthrop from beyond the arc. The Golden Eagles started hot, going 8 for 13 on 3-pointers in the the first half. They cooled down after that, going 0 for 10 with the result in hand in the fourth quarter, and finishing 11 for 30 (36.7%).
“I thought we took good shots prior to that fourth quarter,” Consuegra said. “We were shooting really well from the 3.
“Again, I thought we created good shots. Which I thought we did last year. It was just last year, we couldn’t quite knock those down. Our kids just have confidence because they put in the work. They know those are shots that we want them to take.”
Forbes, a matchup nightmare at 6-3, led the way by going 3 for 4 on 3s.
“One of the reasons why we brought Jordan (Meulemans) in was because she could shoot the ball,” Forbes said. “And one of our goals for this season coming up was just to shoot the ball and execute on that.”
DePere native Jordan Meulemans makes her Marquette debut after ACL rehab
Meulemans, a DePere native, transferred to her home state after two seasons at Butler. She also hadn’t played since suffering an ACL injury before the 2024-25 season.
She was on the court for 19 minutes in her MU debut and knocked down two 3-pointers.
“She’s a kid that when she shoots, you think she’s making it every time,” Consuegra said. “Just really happy for her.
“I thought her minutes were outstanding. Certainly her No. 1 role is to make some 3s, but I thought defensively she was solid. And they have some pretty quick, athletic kids that she did a great job staying in front of. I thought she played our schemes really well.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: A much-improved guard and bombing away from deep stand out in victory by Marquette women in opener
Reporting by Ben Steele, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
