The Marquette women’s basketball roster continues to update for the 2026-27 season. We got two updates for the roster on Thursday, one that’s pretty straight forward, and one that I’m not 100% sure as to the details.

You might remember MacKenzie Givens from such Xavier teams as “2025-26, when they went 11-19 overall and 4-16 in the Big East” or “2024-25, when they went 7-24 overall and 1-17 in the Big East.” Okay, that’s a little bit unfair to Givens, as she played in just 16 games as a freshman, and only two of those were before Christmas. This past year, she was Xavier’s #2 scorer, averaging 11.7 points. Givens added 4.4 rebounds and 1.1 steals per game, too.

Givens, who is listed by Xavier as a 6’0” guard/forward, may have been the Musketeers’ most impactful player last season. She led the team in PORPAGATU! on BartTorvik.com, which is a measure of your efficiency at your usage rate, and when you’re the only player with an offensive rating over 100…. or even over 90…. and your usage is under 20% — think somewhere between Lee Volker & Halle Vice relative to Marquette — that’s a pretty quick way to get your PRPG! up. Givens was an effective offensive rebounder, falling just short of a 10% rate, and her turnover rate was under 16%, which tells us that in both departments, Xavier’s struggles there were not her fault in the slightest.

If Marquette is looking to have a layups & threes type of offense, Givens is a potential helper there. Her 69% shooting on what Torvik calls “close 2s” is superb, and I have to wonder if she would do better on threes if she had more help. Givens only hit 31.6% of her three-pointers this season, but that could be a developing part of her game as she was just 1-for-4 as a freshman. Xavier was #284 in the country in three-point shooting this past season, and that was with Givens as one of their two best options at the arc. What happens to her shooting when she plays with Halle Vice (40% this past season) and Jordan Meulemans (33.7%)? Does the gravitational pull of better shooters make Givens a better shooter?

Here’s where we have to do a little Internet Detective work to figure out what the Golden Eagles have in Ainoah Rio. Thankfully, she’s had experience playing for a pair of French junior national teams, so FIBA is going to pick up a lot of the slack here. That’s where we find out that Rio is listed at 6’2” — or at least she was when she last appeared in a FIBA event in 2024 — and that she’s going to turn 20 next month. The 6’2” part is particularly useful here, as Marquette lists her as a center in the commitment graphic that they made for her.

Her two junior team events were the 2022 U16 Women’s European Championship and the 2024 U18 Eurobasket. The good news is that France won both events, so Rio was a part of that. The medium news is that it’s clear she wasn’t a major part of either team’s path to a title. She averaged 3.5 points and 2.4 rebounds in the 12 games she played across the two events, and digging deeper into her game logs, Rio didn’t play at all in the championship game of either event. The title games were also the only two competitive games that France played in either tournament, as there was a lot of “beat Belgium in the quarterfinals, 87-48” going on.

Elsewhere in the basketball world, Rio has been playing in the second division French league for at least the past four years. She was with Pole France before moving to La Tronche Meylan for the past two seasons. For the 25-26 season, she averaged 4.8 points and 4.0 rebounds, and it’s worth mentioning that she shot 37% from behind the three-point line, too.

This seems pretty decent, but it does introduce a few questions here and there. How does her junior national team performance and her La Tronche Meylan performance translate to NCAA Division 1? Since she’s already 20 years old, or at least will be by the time we get to next season, what does that mean for her eligibility, not to mention her time in the French second division? What does it mean for Marquette’s rotation if she’s the tallest player on the roster — and she is right now — but isn’t quite up to the level needed to compete for an NCAA tournament berth, and what if she has to come in with not a full four years of eligibility?

Until Marquette puts out a press release on Ainoah Rio, I can not say for certain exactly 1) when she’s actually starting with Marquette, although the obvious presumption is right away or 2) how many years of eligibility she will have. That’s why I’m dropping her onto the 2026-27 roster at the bottom without a tint to her square right now. We’ll update once Cara Consuegra’s office gets us some clarity on the issue. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of days here, but it is what it is for now.

Givens and Rio bring Marquette to 11 players for 2026-27. It’s not ideal that only six of those women have ever played in a Division 1 game before, and if we’re being honest about it, it’s kind of hard to count Kam Herring in that department after this past season. It’s helpful that JJ Barnes has been through a season of D1 hoops even if she was rehabbing her injury for the entire time, and it’s helpful that Brooklyn Hall has a few months of D1 practice under her belt after enrolling mid-season at South Florida.

Is this enough to compete for the Not-UConn Big East title next season? Is this a better roster than what Cara Consuegra had last year? Heck, is she done with this roster? Four spots remain open, so it’s definitely possible that we could see a few more names get added to the list here.

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