The Golden Eagles return to the Valley to face an opponent with kind of similar results as them so far.
In a variation on last week’s game preview, I’m not going to spend a lot of time on analysis of where the Marquette men’s lacrosse season is right now or is going through three games. The way I see it, it’s all very quite simple.
Either
A) Marquette wins a home game against a Cleveland State team that did even worse against #1 Notre Dame than Marquette did
or
B) Marquette loses said game.
A means we learn nothing about what’s going on with Marquette this year because the transitive property tells us that MU should win.
B tells us that MU is in A LOT of trouble going forward.
One thing or the other will happen on Saturday. It’s probably best for Jake Richard’s still young head coaching career if his team wins, right?
REMINDER: Marquette’s home contests are streamed nearly exclusively on FloSports, and the same goes for almost all Big East home games and almost all league schedule contests. If you are paying full price for FloSports at $30 a month, you are doing it wrong. Please use this link to pay $20 via the new-ish FloCollege offering.
Game #4: vs Cleveland State Vikings (1-2)
Date: Saturday, February 22, 2025
Time: Noon Central
Location: Andy Glockner Memorial Bubble, Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteMLax
The Line: Marquette -4 from our friends at Draft Kings.
Marquette is 2-1 all time against Cleveland State. The Vikings got the win in the first ever meeting, while MU got the W in 2020 and 2021. This is the first contest since then and the third to be played in Milwaukee.
Cleveland State started off the 2025 season with a bit of good news, as they were picked to finish second in the NEC as that league resumes sponsoring men’s lacrosse this year. CSU got two first place votes in the balloting, and considering that they’re an affiliate member with the Horizon League serving as their primary home, that’s pretty good news.
The bad news started right about the same time as a referee blew the whistle to start the 2025 season, as CSU was trailing Ohio State 4-0 late in the second quarter before they scored their first goal of the year. That one ended 14-4, and outing #2 didn’t go better as #1 Notre Dame scored 15 of the first 17 goals of that game. The Irish kept pouring it on, a feeling that Marquette is extremely familiar with, and Game #2 went as Loss #2 for Cleveland State by a score of 24-6.
The Vikings did get a win in their home opener, so that’s nice. Xander Johnson found the net eight times against Bellarmine as Cleveland State scored six of the final seven goals of the game to win 16-10. Those eight goals broke the program record for goals in a game and tied the program record for points in a game.
Johnson had just seven shots on the year coming into the Bellarmine game and just one goal against Notre Dame, so I’m not 100% sure if we should take his sudden explosion as a sign of things to come against Marquette. His nine points lead CSU right now, but Jacob Lubrant and Alex Van Voorhis both have seven. Lubrant is spreading the points around between goals (4) and assists (3), while Van Voorhis is loading up on helpers with six already this year. Marquette is probably going to have to watch out for Amiri Austin and Wyatt Robertson, as they have 15 and 13 shots respectively to rank second and third in that department behind Johnson.
Justin Dalum went the distance in net against both OSU and ND and played all but the final four minutes against Bellarmine. As you’d expect his numbers are a bit lopsided right now. 16.36 goals allowed per 60 minutes is not good, but again: Notre Dame threw in 24. If he starts against Marquette, he’ll surpass his career minutes total coming into the season, so this season has been a bit of a baptism of fire so far. Dalum is stopping 41.5% of shots on frame, and things could have been a lot worse against Notre Dame if he didn’t make nine saves.