The Golden Eagles head to Rhode Island in hopes of following up their strong performance in a loss to a ranked team with a Big East road win.
Saturday’s Marquette men’s lacrosse game at Providence appears to be a pivotal one for the Golden Eagles this season.
Marquette won their opener against St. John’s, and then took a double overtime loss against #14 Georgetown last weekend. That leaves them at 1-1 in the league, and tied for third place in a six team conference where 1) only the top four teams reach the Big East tournament and 2) you only play five games to decide who those four teams are. Right now, Providence is tied with St. John’s for fifth/last in the league at 0-2. This means that MU can position themselves with a tiebreaker against both of the teams behind them in the standings on Saturday, as well as giving themselves a two game lead over at least the Friars by way of the result there.
A win would do a lot of work to leave Marquette in control of their own destiny for the conference tournament with two games left to go in the regular season. A loss would mean Marquette probably has to beat either Villanova or Denver to get into the Big East semifinals. I don’t particularly like the idea of guaranteeing that MU can beat one of those two squads, so it’s probably best to beat the team that’s currently on a major downward skid in terms of wins and losses to avoid needing to get past the Wildcats or the Pioneers.
The good news is that head coach Jake Richard can — and based his postgame comments on Saturday, probably will — say to his squad, “Guys, if we play like that, with that effort, with that enthusiasm, with that grit that we had against Georgetown, we’re gonna beat Providence.” It was probably Marquette’s best performance of the season, perhaps the most like the early days of MU men’s lacrosse that we’ve seen a while from the Golden Eagles. Tough, not backing down, sticking their nose into places without fear, so on and so forth. We can draw back to those days because it was Richard himself as a on-field key component of determining exactly what Marquette Lacrosse meant in the early days. If he’s finding a way to wake up the echoes of his glory days as his first season in charge starts to wind towards its close, I like MU’s chances.
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Big East Game #3: at Providence Friars (4-7, 0-2 Big East)
Date: Saturday, April 12, 2025
Time: 10am Central
Location: Chapey Field at Anderson Stadium, Providence, Rhode Island
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteMLax
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 7-5 all time against Providence. The Golden Eagles won the first three meetings in the series, but the Friars have taken four of the last six, including each of the last two. MU will be looking for their first regulation victory in Rhode Island since 2017.
Providence’s season has taken a turn for the worse since the start of March, although it’s kinda sorta not their fault. I mean, yes, they’re the ones that scheduled road games against Fairfield, Duke, and Saint Joseph’s, and seeing as all three of those squads are in the top 17 of the Inside Lacrosse poll, that’s how you lose three out of four games heading into your Big East opener against a ranked Georgetown team.
PC suffered the same fate as Marquette against the Hoyas, a one goal loss, and it’s probably just as annoying for them as it was for the Golden Eagles. The Friars finished up a 4-0 burst across the end of the third quarter and the start of the fourth to go up 10-9 with 10 minutes to go. After that, they gave up a 5-2 burst to GU in less than eight minutes of time, and that’s how you’re down two with three minutes left. Jack Horrigan tallied with 2:42 to go, but Georgetown won the draw and burned off the clock.
The Friars dropped to 0-2 in the Big East last time out by way of an 11-8 loss to Villanova where they fell behind 6-3 midway through the second and never found a way to turn the game around. That was Providence’s fourth straight loss and fifth in their last six games. Like I said: Turn for the worse.
Jack Horrigan is the top goal scorer in the Big East these days, just barely edging out Georgetown’s Aidan Carroll, 2.55 per game to 2.50 even after Carroll put up five on the Golden Eagles on Saturday. The thing that make Horrigan particularly dangerous is that running mate Richie Joseph is actually tied with Carroll for the second best goals per game mark in the conference. Mix in a healthy dash of Ryan Bell averaging better than three assists per game — although that’s easier with five goals per outing from your top two scorers, I suppose — and Providence seems like they have a pretty dangerous offense. I say seems like because Lacrosse Reference has them at #32 in the country in efficiency. That’s middle of the country-ish, so it’s kind of a “Horrigan and Joseph better be scoring otherwise it’s a bad day” situation, it seems.
Dan Donahue is stopping a bit more than 50% of shots on frame this season, so that’s a pretty solid job, better than Marquette goalie Lucas Lawas at the very least. He’s letting in 11.86 per 60 minutes of action this season, so I’d wager that PC’s overall defense isn’t doing Donahue a lot of favors out in front of him. The Friars are last in the Big East in penalty kills, coming up with the stop just 54% of the time, so that’s not helping Donahue out at al.
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