Marquette women’s basketball coach Cara Consuegra has seen every side of roster construction in the transfer portal era.
After getting hired by MU in 2024, she quickly had to put together a team. Last year, it was the complete opposite with the Golden Eagles being the only squad in college hoops to bring back every player from the previous season’s roster.
This off-season was kind of a hybrid. MU kept one key player (Halle Vice), but lost another (Skylar Forbes transferred to West Virginia) while also saying goodbye to a big senior class and a few other transfers. That left plenty of spots to fill, so Consuegra and her staff had to work fast.
“I think what we learned in our first year is just how important character of kids is to us,” Consuegra said on May 22 in her office at the Al McGuire Center. “Obviously, we want to bring in the most highly talented players that we can, but also players that we think will fit our culture, will fit Marquette culture.
“Our mindset here is we don’t want to do this every year if we can help it. We want to bring in kids that want to be here for other reasons than maybe the financial benefit. So I think that’s harder to do, but I think it’s doable. We tried really hard to do that our first time. I think actually that paid off. Everybody stuck around.”
Marquette adds deep class of transfer players
The sheer number of players in the transfer portal seems daunting. How do you even begin to sift through over 1,000 names to find what you are looking for?
“We’re fortunate we had a strong staff,” Consuegra said. “Our days literally during the portal were … 9 a.m. portal meeting, let’s talk about everybody that’s gone in the portal in the last 24 hours.
“We kind of broke it up among our staff by leagues. So (this person) is doing the ACC and (that person) is doing the Big Ten, just to make it easy.
“But you might say, ‘Hey … do you know so and so can you make a call?’ So we also worked collaboratively, but it helped us just kind of organize it. So we’d have a morning meeting, we work on the portal all day and then we’d have like a 5 p.m. meeting about what happened throughout the day. Who do I need to follow up with and things like that. So I think organization is huge.”
The Golden Eagles used every avenue to land players, including:
“I think one of the biggest things we wanted was to try to create some roster balance,” Consuegra said. “Because our roster was so unbalanced when we built our team the first time. We had everybody in the same two classes.
“That’s part of the big turnover this year. So we really were like, man, we need to get to a place where we can have some roster balance. Again, we don’t want to be a team that’s bringing in kids from the portal, like, tons of kids from the portal every year. So if we can get some younger kids and retain them as well, and you got to bring in some kids with some experience and kind of mold that together.
“So that was really the thought process. We didn’t take any one-year kids. We talked to a few. Depending on how things shook out, we maybe would have taken one. But we were really trying to get kids with at least two years (of eligibility remaining).”
Halle Vice will step into big role as senior
Consuegra has a vision for how this new group will play together, but she’ll find out how the pieces fit together on the court when the team starts practicing in June.
“We know how we want to play offensively, which is fast,” Consuegra said. “So that’s part of the kids you’re looking for. You have to recruit speed, you can’t just be fast because of the way you play.
“We really like our offense. So a big thing for us was changing the type of post players that we recruited. We didn’t want a back-to-the-basket kid that can’t leave the paint. That just doesn’t really work with how we want to play.
“It’s really hard to play kids like that in the Big East against some of the teams. We have to go against the motion teams – Villanova or Creighton – and you can’t play kids like that. And then we wanted to be bigger, longer, more athletic.”
Consuegra wants to see a more disruptive defense.
“We were not as good last year as we were in our first year,” she said. “But I think (with) our athleticism, our length, our depth, we’re going to be able to do a little bit more defensively. I’d like to press more. I’d like to maybe do some run-and-jump. I’d like to trap a little bit of ball screens.”
The 6-1 Vice is the versatile player who ties everything together. Keeping around an all-Big East first team selection who averaged 13.7 points and 8.9 rebounds as a junior was huge.
“She was kind of the Robin and I think she has an opportunity to kind of be Batman now,” Consuegra said. “And we saw some opportunities that she had last year and some games where Skylar was out and Halle really stepped up and was the Batman.
“And so I think her confidence has grown this spring, knowing she’s the go-to (player), and obviously we got to figure out how everybody else fits.”
Cara Consuegra also hired two assistants during busy stretch
Not only did Consuegra have to restock the roster, she also hired two new assistant coaches, Sheila Boykin and Joe Silvestri.
“Sheila was the first hire,” Consuegra said. “What I liked about her is she’s played at a really high level.
“She played at LSU and then played overseas. And I think particularly for African-American females, it’s important for them to have a role model.
“And she’s done it. She’s done it at a really high level. And I think she’s a rising star in this profession. Heard nothing but good things. Thoroughly loved her through the interview process. She’s come in and literally hit the ground running.”
Silvestri’s hiring was different after ex-MU assistant Chaia Meier landed the head coaching job at Bradley.
“That was hard because the portal was happening,” Consuegra said. “So you’re spending your days calling kids and agents and people and then I’m trying to figure out a coach.
“I don’t have enough time in the day. And so Joe is somebody that I’ve known for a very long time, and him and I have talked through the years about maybe working together. But for whatever reasons, it didn’t really align. And so I called him and I was like, ‘Look, this would be a really great time if you want to come here.’
“He’s somebody I trust. He’s a worker. I know he can help us. He’s great with connecting and relationships. And I basically was, like, ‘Look, I don’t have time for an interview, so do you want to come?’ And he was, like, ‘Yeah, I think I do.’ ”
Consuegra can finally come up for air after a whirlwind few months.
“The thing I’m continually learning is who do I want to be and how do I want this program to be and what I want it to be built around,” she said. “I mean, the portal is nuts, and you can be chasing the wrong things very easily.
“And you can get caught up in what things cost and what kids want. And I think we were really intentional. Who do we want? What do we want their character to be about? There’s a part of us that we want them to be here at Marquette, not just because of the basketball opportunity, but also the collegiate opportunity here in terms of the academics and the culture.
“And that’s who we want to keep going after. And that’s where we think we can be successful.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: How Cara Consuegra rebuilt roster ahead of third season at Marquette
Reporting by Ben Steele, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
