Marquette Women’s Basketball Gets Commitments From MacKenzie Givens & Ainoah Rio

Ainoah Rio

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?

Here’s the newest scholarship chart.

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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