The Golden Eagles start off the Jake Richard Era and the 2025 season on the road against a ranked Wolverines team.
It is time to begin The Jake Richard Era of Marquette men’s lacrosse.
Technically, all of Marquette men’s lacrosse has been The Jake Richard Era, as he went from playing in MU’s very first game to standing on the sidelines coaching immediately after graduation and now to head coach after Andrew Stimmel left the post back in the spring. Richard has been hands on involved in every single game in Marquette lacrosse history, and that streak continues on Saturday with his first ever game as a head coach.
It’s an interesting moment for Marquette lacrosse, as they are coming off a 4-10 season a year ago where the Golden Eagles went winless in Big East play. Marquette hasn’t finished a season with a winning record since Richard’s last game in uniform, which was the NCAA tournament game against North Carolina. The NCAA tournament loss to Notre Dame one year later moved MU to 8-8 on the year, so that’s not a winning record, and MU hasn’t even been .500 at the end of a season since.
And while that sounds like a bit of a bummer, we’re on track to see team history this year. Bobby O’Grady starts the season with 133 career points. He already has Marquette’s all-time goals record with 114 making him just the second man to ever score 100 goals in a MU career. He needs just 20 points to pass Ryan McNamara’s career points mark of 152. With a career points-per-game mark of 3.09, O’Grady’s on track to get there in game #7 of the year.
If Marquette shows a marked improvement on the offensive end with new offensive coordinator Mark Bieda running the show, maybe O’Grady gets there faster than that. WE’re going to need to see multiple new faces step up as contributors this season if MU wants to end up on the plus side of the win/loss ledger. That’s not just on offense, it’s across the board. We don’t really know who’s going to be the starting six man attack, we don’t know who’s going to be the starting close defenders, and we don’t know who’s going to get the call in net for Marquette.
There’s a lot of moving parts as we head into the season, and the fact of the matter is, because of that #15 sitting next to the name of MU’s first opponent, I’m not sure how many solid and obvious answers we’re going to get after the first game.
Game #1: at #15 Michigan Wolverines (0-0)
Date: Saturday, February 1, 2025
Time: Noon Central
Location: Michigan Lacrosse Stadium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Streaming: B1G+, which means a $13 monthly subscription, if you’re so inclined.
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteMLax
Marquette is 2-4 all time against Michigan. The Wolverines have won three of the last four meetings, including last year’s encounter down in Florida. Michigan has won the game each of the three times they’ve been at least receiving national poll votes.
So here’s a fun thing: The Big Ten is apparently not putting out a preseason poll of any kind. I’m writing this on Wednesday morning, and there’s nothing, even though all six Big Ten men’s lacrosse teams are going to play a game on Saturday. Not cool, Big Ten!
Heck, Michigan themselves haven’t done any kind of preseason previewing on their own website. The closest we can come to knowing something about the Wolverines relative to their own conference this season is noting that while they start the year #15 in the country, Michigan is fourth in their own league in the Inside Lacrosse media poll. Maryland (#5), Johns Hopkins (#8), and Penn State (#14) are all in front of them. Ohio State came in at #19, and Rutgers even picked up votes. Seems like Big Ten play might be severely unfun for at least one team, probably two.
It would seem that a little bit of the thought on Michigan’s preseason hype is sitting directly on the shoulders of Ryan Cohen. He’s coming off a 34 goal, 37 assist season a year ago, and that was good enough to lead the Wolverines in assists and points. However, the Wolverines return just two of the six guys who scored at least 10 goals for them a year ago, with Aiden Mulholland (18G, 3A) as the only other one next to Cohen. They do return Bo Lockwood, who finished the year with 37 points thanks to 29 assists in 2024, and if he can create goals at the same pace with a fresh group of shooters, then that will probably pay off for Michigan.
Hunter Taylor returns in net for Michigan. He started all 17 games a year ago, stopping just over 49% of shots on goal and allowing just 11.17 goals per 60 minutes. He had a big close to the season a year ago, as Michigan was just 7-6 at the end of the regular season. Thanks to Taylor allowing less than 10 goals in each of Michigan’s three Big Ten Tournament games — including just four to Penn State in the title game — the Wolverines won the thing and made it to the NCAA tournament. They ended up losing to Denver in their first game, but hey, Marquette fans know all about ending up on the short side of the stick against the Pioneers.