The Golden Eagles host a D3 team for Senior Night & visit the Flames.
Marquette men’s soccer comes into Thursday’s Senior Night match against a Division 3 opponent at either a great spot or an awful spot, depending on how you view that cup with liquid standing at its midpoint.
If you’re half-empty, then it’s an awful spot, as Marquette is winless in their last three and have let quality chances to topple ranked opponents slip past them twice. Once came by way of slightly awkward physics dooming them twice, once because of one great play late in an otherwise scoreless contest. Sandwiched in the middle of those two losses was a scoreless draw that Marquette was incredibly lucky to grab onto.
If you’re half-full, then Thursday night against Edgewood is a fantastic opportunity to let all of those nightmares from the last three matches disappear in the rear view mirror. Ignore it, let it recede into the distance, and go out and pound a D3 opponent. The kind of effort that kept you knotted with #9 Northwestern for 90% of the match will be the kind of effort that easily leads to not only a win over the D3 squad but also the D1 squad from the Missouri Valley that’s waiting for a visit on Sunday.
Either way, the fact of the matter is that these are Marquette’s final two matches before Big East play starts. Villanova is the first opponent and that match is just eight days after Thursday’s home contest. Yes, the Milwaukee Cup match on October 8th is the final non-conference match, but MU has three Big East matches to play before we get to that. Whatever else the Golden Eagles have going on, these two matches we’re about to preview are new head coach David Korn’s final two matches that count before Marquette begins their quest to get back into the Big East tournament after missing for the last few years. Marquette needs to be a better soccer team 180 minutes from now than they are the last time we saw them in action, and honestly? That probably means that they need to stack up two wins.
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Match #7: vs Edgewood Eagles (3-1-1)
Date: Thursday, September 12, 2024
Time: 7:30pm Central*
Location: Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: Flo FC
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteSoccer
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
*— The timing on the start of this match is a little up in the air. Marquette women’s soccer is hosting Mercyhurst with a 5pm start time, and usually, when they do these doubleheaders, we can just say “7:30 or 30 minutes after the conclusion of the previous match.” However, this is Senior Night for men’s soccer, and they’ll be honoring Patrick Crantz, Dominik Danis, Josh Hewitt, Donovan Jones, Matt Mclaughlin, Abdoul Karim Pare, and Tim Smith in a pre-match ceremony that they claim is going to start at 7pm….. except the women’s match might not be done by then. So we’ll all see what happens together!
This is the first ever meeting between Marquette and Edgewood, at least in matches that count on the record books for the Golden Eagles. That’s not surprising what with 1) Edgewood being a D3 program and 2) Edgewood only having a team since 1990. Maybe if Edgewood’s program had been running in the 1960s or 1970s, there would be some crossover and so on, but nope. Heck, this isn’t even an official match for Edgewood, as they’re listing it as an exhibition.
Edgewood went 8-9-3 last year and had their season end in their conference tournament by way of a 5-0 loss to Milwaukee School of Engineering. I’m trying to be as nice as possible here, but getting shelled by a bunch of engineers and an occasional accountant or nurse who happen to like soccer an awful lot seems like a pretty rough way to have your season ended…… especially after losing 4-1 to MSOE at home in the regular season.
WITH THAT SAID, 2023 was Edgewood’s best finish since 2018 thanks to first year head coach Tim Bruner. The Eagles were picked to finish fifth in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference this season, and they even picked up a first place vote in the preseason poll. They opened their year with a 1-0 loss at then-#16 Eau Claire, but Edgewood is undefeated since then and they’re coming off a 9-0 shelling of UW-Stout on Sunday.
As a whole, Edgewood is outscoring their opponents 25-6 this season. Most of that scoring work is being done by Connor Gage and Miguel Konde Gwo, who have six and four goals respectively. Gage has four assists as well, so he has a point on 10 of Edgewood’s tallies this season, while Konde Gwo is second on the team in assists behind Gage with two.
Maverick Van Laanen has played the majority of the minutes in net this season for the Eagles, but we should note that Griffin Meisterheim played all 90 minutes against Stout as well as the final 35 minutes of the match before that….. although that was a 10-2 destruction of Lawrence and Edgewood was up 7-2 at the time. IUnless there was an injury involved, I presume we’re getting Van Laanen on Thursday, but it is worth noting that Edgewood went with the freshman Meisterheim after he subbed into the previous contest.
Match #8: at Illinois-Chicago Flames (2-3-0)
Date: Sunday, September 15, 2024
Time: 7pm Central
Location: Flames Field, Chicago, Illinois
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteSoccer
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 6-4-2 all time against Illinois-Chicago. Most of the matches have happened since the turn of the century, although the first ever meeting was back in 1964, the first ever season in MU history. Marquette is unbeaten in the last three meetings, which were wins in 2012 and 2016 and a 2-2 draw in 2017.
We already have two comparison points between Marquette and UIC this season. The Flames went out to Madison and took a 5-1 loss on August 29th, and UW was up 4-1 at the half. Illinois-Chicago also welcomed Northwestern to Flames Field on September 2nd, and much like Marquette’s visit to Evanston, the Wildcats ended up with a 1-0 win. The difference there is that NU outshot UIC 16-4, including 11-1 in the first half with the goal coming in the 41 minute mark. This sounds like two teams that Marquette went at it hammer and tongs with for 90 minutes cruised past the Flames with relative ease. Styles make fights, transitive property, etc., but that seems like a good sign for the Golden Eagles.
We also have a future reference point, as UIC lost 4-3 to DePaul….. but it was 3-1 at intermission and the Blue Demons scored 23 seconds into the second half. We’ll have to wait to see how Marquette lines up against DePaul, but perhaps the UIC/DePaul tape will come in handy twice this season.
The Flames were picked to finish third in the Missouri Valley Conference this season, and they even picked up two first place votes in the polling. Their top three scorers from last season all return for the 2024 campaign, but so far, only Bart Muns has followed through on that promise. He’s leading the team in goals with three right now — UIC hosts Loyola Chicago on Thursday — and his one assist on the season gives Muns a team high in points with seven. Jesus De Vicente has just two helpers this season, while Joshua Torres has one goal right now. Torres is tied for the team lead in shots with both Muns and Rui Reis (2 goals, 2 assists) with nine attempts each.
Grad student Oren Asher has played every minute in net so far this season for Illinois-Chicago. As you could kind of tell from the comparative portion of this preview, he’s not doing so hot. 2.40 goals per 60 minutes is no good, and neither is a .636 save percentage. the 6-foot tall Israeli had much better stats in over 1,500 minutes played last season, so Asher is bound to improve eventually. Marquette’s job here is to help him dig further into the ditch.