The Golden Eagles take their perfect record on the road for the first time this season.
Well, the David Korn era of Marquette men’s soccer is off to a rousing start, to say the least.
The worst thing that you can say about their 2-0 win over Drexel in the opener is that Marquette maaaaaaaybe caught a break by scoring on their only two shots of the first half and then had to defend their butts off to secure the victory. I’m just saying: Is anyone really blaming anyone for a team not pushing forward hard enough to shoot in the final 18 minutes of a match when they have a 2-0 lead anyway?
The worst thing that you can say about their 6-1 win over Marist is either A) Marquette did kind of pad the margin a wee bit by scoring twice in the final six minutes, but hey, you gotta keep the ball away from the other guys, or B) The Golden Eagles were maybe scant inches away from a second straight shutout. The only reason Marist broke up Marten Brink’s shutout run to start the season is because a slightly dubious handball call in the box that stood up to VAR review granted the Red Foxes a penalty kick that they converted. To be fair to the referee, if you drag your hand behind you on a slide tackle down on the end line and the ball hits your hand while moving towards the net, yeah, that would be a fair call. Don’t leave your hands waving around kids.
Two matches, eight goals, two wins. Nicely done lads, especially after we watched Marquette average less than two goals per game last season.
Of course, the final year of Louis Bennett’s run in charge of the team also featured a bunch of goals going into the net early in the season and then not so much late in the year in Big East play. It’s a good start and a positive start, but the Golden Eagles have to keep building on that start. Their next two matches are against a team coming off an NCAA tournament victory a year ago and a squad that just put up the same eight goals against the same opponents Marquette played last weekend. It’s an interesting test of where Marquette is right now, as well as David Korn’s first official road trip as head coach.
Match #3: at Yale Bulldogs (0-0-0)
Date: Friday, August 30, 2024
Time: 5pm Central
Location: Reese Stadium, New Haven, Connecticut
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats, probably
Twitter Updates: @marquettesoccer
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 0-1-0 all time against Yale. This match is a return bout from a contest in Milwaukee in September of 2022, and that was a 3-2 Bulldogs victory. That match “featured” four penalty kick goals in the second half.
Yes, Friday’s match is Yale’s season opener. Yes, I presume this is related to some sort of Ivy League preciousness about having athletes on campus practicing before the school year starts. There’s only one Ivy League team that’s playing a match before this one, and that’s Columbia visiting Quinnipiac earlier in the day on Friday. But they did put out a preseason poll on Tuesday, so that’s helpful. Yale is picked to finish second in the league behind Princeton this season, based on a vote of 16 media members. However, in an interested twist, the Elis snagged eight first place votes against seven for Penn, the team that landed as the favorite. Penn ended up with 115 points versus 108 for Yale, so it seems that the voters that don’t have Yale out in front have them a bit back of first place, as the top votes weren’t enough to keep it closer than seven points.
Yale went 11-6-3 a year ago. A 3-1-3 record in Ivy play landed them as the #3 seed in the first ever conference tournament, but they picked up a 4-0 semifinal win over Harvard and a 2-1 win over Brown to win the thing and advance to the NCAA tournament. That was the Bulldogs’ first spot in the NCAA field since 2019, and they made a big deal out of it, beating Bryant on the road in the first round for the program’s first tourney win since 1999 before falling to Hofstra in the next round.
But that was last year. Yale has lost their top two scorers from the 2023 squad, making Quanah Brayboy the top returning point getter with 11. He got there on nine assists and a goal a year ago. There’s a four-way tie for Yale’s top returning goalscorer, as there were four guys on last year’s team to score twice and they’re all back in 2024. Joseph Farousz leads the group there as he added three assists to get to seven points on the year, while TJ Presthus had the most shot attempts out of the group of four.
Chris Edwards played every minute in goal last season, and he’s back on the roster this fall. The 6’1” senior from Texas allowed precisely 20 goals in 20 matches last season and stopped 73% of shots on frame along the way. 2023 was his first year as Yale’s primary keeper, and all told, that was a pretty successful first year in the job.
Match #4: at UW-Madison Badgers (2-0-0)
Date: Monday, September 2, 2024
Time: 7pm Central
Location: McClimon Soccer Complex, Madison, Wisconsin
Streaming: B1G+, which will cost you $13 for a month.
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @marquettesoccer
Marquette is 19-32-11 all time against Wisconsin. You can argue that the series is tilting in Marquette’s favor over the last 13 years. Since their meeting in September 2010, Marquette holds a record of 7-5-1, which is really good considering that it took Marquette 20 years to record their first seven wins over the Badgers. MU won in Milwaukee a year ago, as a ranked Marquette team beat a ranked Wisconsin team while closing the contest out with 10 men. That is a thing that happened in a year where Marquette finished 7-6-3. Weird!
Want to play a fun game? It’s called “Who had a better weekend against Drexel & Marist?” Marquette beat both teams by a final margin of 8-1, with the one goal coming on an at least questionable handball call in the box against Marist. Wisconsin beat both teams by a final margin of 8-0, and the Badgers have the advantage of winning both matches by a score of 4-0. Marquette “only” scored twice against Drexel. Marquette finished the two matches with a 22-20 shot advantage, while Wisconsin is at 32-14 on the year so far.
I think we have to say advantage Wisconsin?
With that said, the Badgers were picked to finish last in the 11 team Big Ten this season. Gosh, an 11 team Big Ten, can you imagine? Part of that has to be because Wisconsin lost two of their top three scorers after last season. One of them is top scorer Maxwell Keenan, who was a senior, and he put up two goals and four assists to tie with returning man Thomas Raimbault for points. The other guy is Mitchell Dryden, who had three goals and a helper last season for Wisconsin. For those of you paying attention, yes, that’s the same Mitchell Dryden who has three goals in two matchers for Marquette this season. It’d be pretty neat if he had topped his goal total from last year before this match even kicks off, yeah?
Dean Boltz is powering the Badgers’ offense so far this season. He has four goals after putting up a hat trick against Marist in the opener. Boltz has an assist as well, and Trip Fleming is the only other guy on the roster to have something other than a 1 in only one of the two scoring columns this season. Fleming got there by way of a goal and an assist against Drexel.
Matisse Hebert made his collegiate debut against Marist in the season opener, and it’s hard to argue with his results so far. Then again, UW’s field defense is doing a great job of not putting burdens on him. The 6’4” Quebecois had to make just one save in each match so far this year, and he’s only seen the opponents muster up 14 shots in total. Wisconsin held Marist to just three shots for the entire match, which again, makes things very easy for Hebert. We’ll see if that field defense holds up through a Thursday night home contest against UIC before Marquette comes to town.