Marquette University and the quiet edge of postseason pressure as BIG EAST honors reshape the bracket
In the lead-up to the BIG EAST Women’s Basketball Tournament on March 7 (ET), Marquette University sits in the same conference orbit as a rising Seton Hall team whose top players are collecting the kinds of honors that change how opponents prepare—possession by possession, whistle by whistle, and sometimes in the final minutes when legs get heavy.
What happened ahead of the BIG EAST tournament—and why it matters now
The BIG EAST announced its Women’s Basketball Annual Awards on Thursday, placing three Seton Hall women’s basketball players in the spotlight just before the postseason. Junior guard Savannah Catalon earned a unanimous selection to the All-BIG EAST First Team and was also named to the conference’s first-ever All-Defensive Team. Graduate forward Mariana Valenzuela also was a unanimous selection to the All-BIG EAST First Team. Freshman Zahara Bishop earned All-Freshman Team honors after being named the conference’s Freshman of the Week three times this season.
The awards arrive at a time when teams begin to narrow their plans: who can take over a game, who can force turnovers without gambling, who will draw fouls when defenses tighten. In the BIG EAST, those questions are no longer abstract for Seton Hall—its answers have names, and they now come with official recognition.
How Marquette University enters the story through one night and one number
Valenzuela’s season included a career-high 26 points against Marquette on Jan. 14, a game that sits as one of the clearer snapshots of what she can become when she finds rhythm. The moment matters not because it is a standalone feat, but because it becomes a reference point that follows teams into tournament scouting meetings: a reminder that a player can lift her ceiling against a conference opponent with familiarity, physicality, and urgency.
Valenzuela started all 29 games for Seton Hall and averaged 12. 9 points per game while shooting 47% from the field and 38. 7% from 3-point range. She also had a team-high 7. 4 rebounds per game, led Seton Hall in rebounding 18 times, and posted four double-doubles. She was named to the BIG EAST Weekly Honor Roll twice and Player of the Week once, leading Seton Hall in scoring nine times.
Seton Hall head coach Anthony Bozzella framed her impact in workmanlike terms after her performance against Butler, saying: “She works every day. [She] doesn’t say a word. She’s only been here two months [and] as a person, she’s right up there with all of them [SHU’s greats]. ”
Who are Savannah Catalon and Mariana Valenzuela—and what the awards say about their season
Catalon’s recognition stacks two ways: the conference’s top tier of overall players, and a newly created defensive honor that signals how the league is defining impact. Catalon started all 29 games and set new single-season career highs in nearly every statistical category, averaging 13. 7 points per game with shooting splits of 40. 8%, 34. 5%, and a conference-best 89. 4% from the line. She added 4. 6 rebounds, 2. 2 assists, and 2. 7 steals per game.
Her defense did not live only in reputation. With 79 total steals, Catalon is tied for the sixth-most in a single season in Seton Hall program history. The context around her defensive case stretches back to last season as well: the season summary notes that had she not missed several games due to injury, she likely would have led the BIG EAST in steals per game by a wide margin and may have had a strong case for BIG EAST Defensive Player of the Year.
Bozzella’s praise for Catalon, delivered after a season-high 24 points against Xavier on Dec. 28, carried both competitive and personal weight: “She’s one of the best players I’ve ever coached. No one tries harder, no one wants to win more, no one’s a better human being. ”
In a tournament setting, accolades can read like banners—nice, distant, ceremonial. But in practice they become shorthand for very specific realities: a guard who can pressure a dribble without fouling; a forward who can score efficiently while also cleaning the glass. Those realities are the kind that force opponents to choose what to concede.
What responses teams are making as postseason basketball arrives
The immediate response is structural: honors consolidate attention. Coaches and players cannot erase what has happened over a season, but they can decide what they will allow next. A unanimous First Team pick signals consensus across the league’s evaluators; an All-Defensive designation amplifies the message that defense is being measured and rewarded in a clearer way than before.
For Seton Hall, the response is also about continuity. Catalon and Valenzuela each started all 29 games, a detail that speaks to reliability as much as production. In the postseason, reliability becomes its own advantage—rotations shorten, possessions feel louder, and the pressure tests whether a team can lean on the same pillars it leaned on in January.
For opponents, including Marquette University within the conference landscape, the response becomes tactical and psychological at once. Tactical, because Catalon’s ability to generate steals and draw fouls shifts how teams handle the ball. Psychological, because a career-high like Valenzuela’s 26-point night against Marquette on Jan. 14 becomes a memory that can sharpen focus—or add weight—depending on which side of the scouting report you’re on.
Where the postseason tension settles, just before the first whistle
On the calendar, March 7 (ET) is a tournament start. On the court, it is a narrowing: from seasons to matchups, from reputations to possessions. The BIG EAST awards do not play the games, but they help define the emotional temperature of what comes next—who enters with validation, who enters with a target, who enters determined to prove that a vote is not destiny.
And somewhere in that tightening circle is the lingering echo of Jan. 14, when Valenzuela reached a career-high against Marquette University—one night that now reads differently under postseason light, as if the tournament has been rehearsing in plain sight all along.
