The season is speeding to a conclusion, and the Golden Eagles need a few points to solidify their standing in the Big East tournament picture.
The Big East’s move to divisional play for men’s soccer and thus an eight match conference schedule keeps throwing me off.
We’re only four matches into Marquette’s Big East slate right now, and it’s half over! Heck, MU didn’t even play every minute of all four of those matches because the officials ended last weekend’s match with Providence early because of lightning! The regular season is going to be over two weeks from Saturday! We’ve only played four matches! There’s supposed to be 10 of these things! I’m so confused.
This is Akron’s fault.
Anyway.
Marquette is 2-2-0 after getting handed a lightning-shortened loss to Providence. That’s still good enough for second place in the Midwest Division — BEHIND AKRON, OF COURSE — but that’s not necessarily important at the moment. The divisional winners get into the Big East tournament, but that’s it. After that, it’s just the next six best records, regardless of division, and for the moment, Marquette’s six points have them as the fifth best team in that next six. Part of this is because Georgetown and St. John’s are tied for first in the East with nine points, and then there’s a three-way tie for third at seven points.
The good news is that three of the remaining four matches are against the three teams currently all tied for third place behind Marquette in the Midwest Division. Marquette has six points, they all have four. If MU just stays in front of them, then they’re fine for the conference tournament. That doesn’t even mean that they need to win all three, but that is, of course, the easiest way to stay in front of all three.
Beating those jerk Zips would help too, but that’s an issue for next week.
Big East Match #5: at Xavier Musketeers (4-5-4, 1-2-1 Big East)
Date: Saturday, October 19, 2024
Time: 6pm Central
Location: Corcoran Field, Cincinnati, Ohio
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteSoccer
Marquette is 8-5-2 all time against Xavier. Marquette hasn’t picked up a win against the Musketeers since the timeshifted 2020 season with a pair of 2-1 losses sandwiching a scoreless draw since then.
Xavier comes in winless in their last four contests and without a goal in three of them. Heck, we can barely give them credit for the one goal that they did score in that timeframe because it came 22 seconds into a match they lost 3-1. To a Cleveland State team that was 2-5-3 coming in. In a match that they had a 23-6 shot advantage.
Yikes.
It would seem that Xavier’s entire deal this season involves trying to eliminate shots from the game entirely. On average, there are just 19.8 combined shots in an Xavier match. Marquette’s not doing that much better at 21.6, but that’s still more and MU’s not the world’s most offensively powerful squad.
Matthew Senanou is Xavier’s top scorer this season but he has just three goals on 13 shots on the year. He’s also listed as a defender and hasn’t scored since September 5th. Senanou is also third on the team in shots, so MU is going to have to keep an eye on him while also marking Cooper Forcellini (team high 18 shots, one goal) and Nathan Trickett (17 shots, 2 goals).
Jonny Mennell is minding the net for the Musketeers and I think Xavier’s attempt to remove shots from the match is helping him out. Can’t have goals going in if there aren’t shots, and that’s helping push Mennell to a goals-against average of 0.92. He’s only saving 73% of shots on goal this season, so if you can generate pressure on the 6’5” junior from North Carolina, there’s a pretty strong chance that you can find away to punch one in.