The 2026-27 college basketball season is right around the corner, so let's throw you a curveball as to how we're going about our Marquette women's basketball previews. Normally we don't go person by person on the roster, but this year, there's one returning player that deserves to have a stand-alone feature before we go about previewing the rest of the roster. That's Halle Vice, and so here we're going to highlight why she's the most important player on the roster this winter, organizing our thoughts into categories, just like we have in dozens of Player Previews before now:
Reasonable Expectations
Why You Should Get Excited
Potential Pitfalls
With that out of the way, we should just jump in, shouldn't we?
How far we have come since Megan Duffy recruited Halle Vice to Marquette, played her for a total of 62 minutes during her freshman year, and then caught the next thing smoking out of Milwaukee. Yes, yes, I remember that Vice suffered a preseason wrist injury that year and that kept her from debuting for the Golden Eagles until late November, I know that a freshman having to sit out a stretch in early season practice is going to limit them all season long, I get it. She also played just one minute in a 52-38 home win over Georgetown in early February.
That led us to Cara Consuegra's first season in charge, which was Vice's sophomore campaign, and Vice was the least experienced returning player on the roster that year. So it's safe to say that no one was expecting her to start all 32 games, average over 31 minutes a night, and put 11.5 points and a team high 7.4 rebounds per game on the board. That turned Vice into a cornerstone of what Consuegra was doing with the Golden Eagles as she retained the entire roster for Year 2, and that paid off. She averaged 13.7 points and a Big East best 8.9 rebounds per game last season.
Merely jumping up like that would have been great, but Vice also turned into a more than reliable outside shooter to go with her inside game. She knocked down just barely short of 40% of her three-point attempts last season, which rapidly turned into a situation of "hey, wait, why is Halle Vice only attempting 1.8 of these a game?" That's really a bigger question for Consuegra in general, as Marquette was the #23 team in the country in three-point shooting percentage but just #171 in terms of attempt rate. Generally speaking: I think that if you have three 39% or better three-point shooters, you should start designing your entire offense around getting them shots.
Still, in Vice's case, it's hard to say it's a good idea to take two point attempts away from her. Vice was #53 in the country in two-point shooting percentage last season, getting over 58% of her shots to fall. Mix that with ranking #176 in defensive rebounding rate and #226 in overall rebounding rate according to Her Hoop Stats , and you do understand why Consuegra wasn't enthralled with the idea of scheming Vice out to the three-point line more often.
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The question that you might be asking of "Why does Halle Vice get a pop out solo preview feature?" is directly tied to the reasonable expectations for her this season.
Part of the answer is the reality of Marquette's roster construction for 2026-27. Vice is one of four women who return from last year's roster. She's the only one to start more than once and she has now started all 62 games that Cara Consuegra has coached. Vice's 984 minutes played last season are more than the other three returning players combined, as Jordan Meulemans played 577 mostly off the bench, Kam Herring saw a total of 48 minutes as a freshman on a senior-heavy roster, and JJ Barnes spent the year recovering from a preseason knee injury. By pure default if nothing else, Vice is the most valuable returning player on the roster.
The other part of the answer is the actual value Vice brings to the court for the Golden Eagles. BartTorvik.com ranked Vice #169 in the country last season in PORPAGATU! , which is an expression of her efficiency and value to a team relative to her usage on the court. She was #346 in the country in Box Plus/Minus , which is marking her contributions to points above average. Over at Her Hoop Stats, Vice was #247 in the country in Player Efficiency Ranking, #188 in PER/Minutes, and #405 in Win Shares per 40 minutes. All of this explains why she was a unanimous choice for the All-Big East First Team last season.
Mix the two together — Vice is the only known reliable component of the Marquette roster and she was a massively valuable contributor to the team last year, perhaps the most reliable contributor overall — and that's why we're giving Vice a pop out feature. Short version: She deserves it AND Marquette's success this season is going to be dependent on Vice doing what she does best.
I don't want to go so far as saying that Marquette will only succeed if Vice is the best player on the floor for Marquette every single night. That feels like I'm backing myself and Vice into a corner when it seems very clear that MU's success is going to require several players to do more than their history and background suggests. If that's the case, then it would seem apparent that on more than a few nights, some of those jumps forward are going to outshine Vice.
But I think it is safe to say that the reasonable expectation for Vice is that she has to be the best Halle Vice every single night.
I don't know if Halle Vice's game directly translates to the type of description you might usually attach to a star player. I don't know if you can run the offense through Halle Vice. I don't know if you can say "everything Marquette does is dependent on Halle Vice." My gut instinct is that Halle Vice is the kind of player that everyone would love to have on their team, almost more of a world-class glue player than a superstar type of player. It's easily possible that Marquette's best possible results in 2026-27 stem from building outwards and upwards from what Vice can do for the Golden Eagles instead of asking Vice to carry the mail for Marquette every single night of the season.
But what if I'm wrong?
She's already recognized by the coaches in the Big East as one of the best players in the league, scoring that unanimous selection at the end of last year and pairing it with a nod as one of the 11 best players in the conference going into this season. I can't reasonably say that if Vice explodes this season and if Marquette overshoots their preseason projection of finishing sixth that Vice has a shot at Big East Player of the Year. That's Sarah Strong until it's not.
But what if Vice is the kind of player that can carry a team? What if she has an extra gear now that she's the clear leader on this team? What if Marquette can build everything around her, and what if that leads to the Golden Eagles sailing easily into the 76 team NCAA tournament for Consuegra's first appearance with Marquette? What if Halle Vice is ready for the spotlight on the big stage and there's a real conversation of "well, if UConn wasn't UConn, Vice would be Player of the Year?"
It's not that big of a step.
It's just that the completion of the step might not be up to Vice. She might take a step forward as a player. She might be the best version of herself. She might turn into a legitimate inside/outside threat. She might mix in a little bit more playmaking than her 1.9 assists/game last year. Vice might do everything that last section is asking of her…..
…. and it might not matter if her teammates don't step up to carry the Golden Eagle to success.
Or, potentially worse, from a certain point of view: Vice is the kind of player that she is, and her teammates can't step up to make use of the value that Vice is providing. There are just way too many questions about everyone else on this roster right now to be comfortable saying that the Golden Eagles have an easy pathway to an NCAA tournament bid. I think that you could easily argue that the most likely scenario for this season is MU gets to somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 wins, but they just don't have the collection of wins that justifies putting them in the field, even with the expansion to 76. That can happen even with Halle Vice putting up another 14/9/2/1/1 season.
She might be good, and that might not be good enough.
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