Marquette Dominates Edgewood, Kind Of

If you can be dominating in a 1-0 victory against a Division 3 opponent, that’s what the Golden Eagles did.

It was kind of a weird night at Valley Fields on Thursday as YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles men’s soccer team celebrated Senior Night on September 12th by hosting Edgewood, a Division 3 team, and then kind of just suffocated the Eagles for almost all of 90 minutes for a 1-0 win.

Continuing with the weirdness: Seven men who had started in Marquette’s previous six contests did not start here….. but three more did start…… but five of the seven who didn’t eventually played, with Mitchell Dryden and keeper Marten Brink as the two who didn’t see time at all.

With the lineup all in a tizzy — presumably because head coach David Korn wanted to shuffle his deck on a night where he was playing a Division 3 opponent — it’s not particularly surprising that Marquette’s offense didn’t quite look as connected as you might hope or want to see. The Golden Eagles managed just four shots for the entire first half…… but also they didn’t look bad because they kiiiiiiiinda didn’t even allow Edgewood to attempt a shot all half. Officially they did, the official scorer gave Aldon Lumani an official attempt on a “screw it why not” launch from just inside midfield right before the half ended. FUN FACT: Because reserve keeper Cameron Simpson landed on the ball because it was in between the posts, that goes in the books as a shot on goal!

Marquette came out of the locker room with something more resembling their usual 11 — Jai Hsieh-Bailey on defense, Mitar Mitrovic in the midfield, Abdoul Karim Pare up top, you get the picture — and lo and behold, they had a goal almost within 10 minutes. Officially: 55:09, just nine seconds past the 10 minute mark of the half, coming on the third shot of the half. Justin Milovanov gets the honors on this quick thinking:

Just when you started to say “hey, Edgewood only has a shot officially in this match, that one at the end of the half kiiiiiiinda shouldn’t really count, can they get out of this thing without allowing another,” that’s when the Eagles did get one off. The first was in the 86th minute, but the one that is memorable is in the 89th minute, because Cameron Simpson needed to be alert after not being challenged all that much all night long.

That’s Simpson’s second official save of the night, but it’s obviously his most impressive one. Edgewood would add one more attempt on the rebound, but it missed wide, and that was that.

Win’s a win, I say.

Up Next: Marquette is on the road for the next two contests, and first up is Illinois-Chicago on Sunday. The Flames beat Loyola Chicago at home on Thursday night to move to 3-3-0 on the year.