The Golden Eagles are set to return to a “normal” schedule after COVID altered last year’s slate.
It’s time to do some catching up, as Marquette Golden Eagles men’s lacrosse announced their 2022 schedule over two weeks ago!
I know, right??
This coming spring’s schedule will feature a five game Big East slate and nine non-conference contests. This is a change from how things went last spring when the Golden Eagles played a 10 game double round robin in the Big East and just two non-conference games. The 2022 campaign is a return to the traditional lacrosse campaign, so we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.
Marquette will play almost all of their games on the weekend this season with all but three games getting scheduled for a Saturday. The two games that aren’t on the weekend will both be non-conference games, while the lone game that’s on a weekend but not a Saturday will be a Friday contest to close the regular season on the road against Denver.
After a Blue & Gold scrimmage and a visit to Ohio State for a preseason exhibition, MU will officially open the season with back-to-back road games. They’ll be in Kentucky to face Bellarmine for the opener on February 12th before jetting down to Florida to face Jacksonville on the 19th.
MU’s next four games are all at home. The home opener on the 26th welcomes Utah to Valley Fields for Marquette’s first ever game against the Utes. The first mid-week game comes up next with Michigan coming to Milwaukee on March 1, and Detroit Mercy comes in just four days later. The final home game in this stretch will be against Drexel, and it will be the first of four games this season against a 2021 NCAA tournament team.
Following a trip to Robert Morris on March 19th, Marquette returns home for two straight. Air Force will be the opponent for the first on March 26th, while Providence comes in next to not only open April on the 2nd but also start Big East play.
From there, the Golden Eagles will alternate home and road games for the rest of the regular season. At St. John’s, back in Milwaukee for a Tuesday contest against Notre Dame, at Georgetown for a second straight game against a 2021 NCAA team, back home for Villanova and Senior Day, and then the Friday finale at Denver. It’s tradition for the Golden Eagles to wrap up the regular season with the Pioneers, for some reason, and it will be MU’s final game of the campaign against a team that was in last spring’s national championship tournament.
Yes, that’s three of the final four games against NCAA teams, and that’s how things tend to go around here. One thing that is missing from the schedule is the regular contest against Duke. I presume that has gone by the wayside now that Andrew Stimmel is in his third season as MU’s head coach. After all, the Duke series stemmed from Blue Devils head coach John Danowski extending a first year favor to then-MU head coach Joe Amplo. The first head coach in MU history both played for and then worked with Danowski at Hofstra, but quite obviously, Stimmel does not share the same relationship. With Marquette sporting a 0-7 all-time record against Duke, I’m not exactly complaining that the game is off the board for the time being.
As mentioned a moment ago, this will Andrew Stimmel’s third season in charge of the Golden Eagles. However, it looks like this will be his first ever “normal” season running the show. Year 1 was shut down midway through by the pandemic, and Year 2 was essentially a “Big East Only” season. We’ll have to wait and see how this all pays off for the Golden Eagles, but it should be interesting to see if MU can start moving in a positive direction after posting what was the worst winning percentage in program history last spring.
Here’s the full schedule for you, although we don’t have any start time information for any of the games yet.