A sign of progress from the Golden Eagles this season, but by the end, they didn’t have the gas to take down a ranked Hoyas team.
You have to be impressed with the way that Marquette men’s lacrosse responded to adversity on Saturday afternoon at Valley Fields against #14 Georgetown, even as they took a 10-9 loss in double overtime to fall to 6-4 on the year and 1-1 in Big East action.
Marquette scored first, winning the opening draw and getting the first of three goals on the day from Bobby O’Grady. Georgetown responded, because that’s what the #14 team in the country does, and Aiden Carroll, GU’s top scorer, showed why, scoring on his second and fourth shots of the game to get the visitors out in front, 2-1, midway through the first quarter.
That’s when we got the first response, or the start of a series of responses even, from Marquette. O’Grady scored with 3:46 to go, and he got backed up by goals from Matt Caputo and Beau Westphal before the period ended. 4-2 Marquette after 15 minutes.
Just two goals in the second quarter, but they were spread out. Georgetown tallied early, with Jordan Wray getting on in the net just 70 seconds into the quarter. That was GU’s only goal of the frame, and Westphal scored late again, so it was 5-3 at the half.
Third quarter: Georgetown scored first, and this time, MU scored very quickly afterwards. O’Grady was the actor here, beating Anderson Moore off a pass from Westphal just 37 seconds later. Just trading goals here, and that kept Marquette up 6-4 at this point.
In the back half of the quarter, it started to feel like Georgetown was figuring this game out, the way that you would expect the #14 team in the country to do. Four goals, all in less than three minutes, 8-6 Hoyas. They had tilted it away from Marquette, and given where these two teams were expected to be when this season started, you could understand if that was the precipitating event for Marquette to end up on the losing end.
Except…. Caputo scored 31 seconds later, so it was only 8-7 heading to the fourth. Carroll scored early in the quarter — you can see that early GU goals were a problem for Marquette over and over — but Will Foster and Caputo found the net about a minute apart before things reached the midway point of the frame. 8-8, 8:25 to go. Anyone’s ball game.
Two turnovers by Marquette broke up chances to win it in regulation, but Brad Johnson forced it away from Carroll with less than 90 seconds to go, and after a timeout, Marquette had 74 seconds to win it. As you’d expect, they burned most of the clock down to make sure they had the last scoring chance…… and Moore came up with the save on O’Grady. That’s life, y’know?
It looked like Marquette was in big trouble when they came up with a stop off a Lucas Lawas save, but Jake Bair got triple-teamed trying to finish the clear and turned it over. New possession for the Hoyas….. but Ryan Kilcoyne came up with the ball after a wide shot by Georgetown…. and Bair turned it over again. One final chance for Georgetown, but they didn’t even get the ball to the net, and that meant a second overtime after MU didn’t even manage a shot in the first extra session.
This time, Marquette won the opening draw and got a clean possession. Once again, Moore made the save, this time on Nolan Rappis. On the other ended, Lawas matched his Georgetown counterpart with a stop, notching a career best 17 saves, and somehow, through all of this, Marquette still had a chance to win this game.
O’Grady’s shot didn’t get through traffic to the net, Georgetown got the ball, Aiden Carroll’s pretty dang great, and that’s the ball game with just 24 seconds left in double overtime.
It’s not fun, but that’s MU’s best performance of the season against a ranked opponent. You can easily say that if one of two dozen things goes slightly different, Marquette wins. It’s clear that head coach Jake Richard saw a lot more positive than negative in his first conference loss:
“I thought it was an amazing environment,” first-year MU head coach Jake Richard said. ”We put ourselves in great position early on in the year and what else do you want than Georgetown coming to town with an opportunity to find out what we’re about. We learned a lot about ourselves today in a lot of positive ways, I think.
“I’m really proud of the team’s fight and the pride that they play with. They’re playing for Marquette and they’re playing for each other. You saw that the entire length of the game. I’m just a really proud coach right now and really excited to get back to work for the rest of the season.”
How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and FloSports?
Up Next: As Richard alluded to, they’ve got more games left to go this year. Three more chances to stack up enough wins to make it into the four team conference tournament, and that next opportunity is next week Saturday. The Golden Eagles will head out east to face Providence, with first draw on April 12th set for 10am Central time. The Friars are 4-7 on the year and 0-2 in Big East action after losing 11-8 at home to Villanova on Saturday.