The David Korn Era Of Marquette Soccer Starts With A W

The Golden Eagles score twice and keep Drexel out of the net in the first match with a new head coach in nearly two decades.

On Thursday night in Valley Fields, Marquette men’s soccer was directed by someone other than Louis Bennett for the first time in 18 years.

So far so good, as Abdoul Karim Pare and Mitchell Dryden found the net for MU in the first half and Marten Brink made six saves in his collegiate debut to give the Golden Eagles a 2-0 victory in David Korn’s debut as a Division 1 head coach.

It took a little while for either team to get a shot off — Drexel went first in the eighth minute for Brink’s first save of the match — but Marquette made the most of their first shot of the match. That was Pare’s goal, which he set up himself with a snazzy hesitation step coming down the right side to create space before firing into the far wall of the net in the 12th minute.

Pare’s goal seemed to uncork the Marquette play in general to a certain extent, and by that I mean they started to look a bit more confident as they played with a lead but it wasn’t quite turning into real offensive chances. In fact, Drexel would outshoot the Golden Eagles 6-2 across the first 45 minutes of action…… but MU’s second shot of the match was this attempt in the 27th minute from Mitchell Dryden, making his Marquette debut after transferring in from UW-Madison:

That’s Pare on the assist there, giving him a solid shot at Man of the Match honors, especially seeing as he flicked that pass seemingly into the middle of nowhere, but he might have been the only one to see Dryden ready, willing, and able to shoot forward to make the play that turned into the second goal of the match.

Marquette never truly took control of the match in terms of pace of play and the like, but that’s the kind of thing that happens when you’re also protecting a 2-0 lead. Drexel outshot Marquette by a healthy margin, 7-3, after intermission, and the Golden Eagles defense stepped forward to break up chances again and again as well. Four of those seven Drexel shots were good enough that Marten Brink, the 6’7” freshman from Germany, needed to make a save on the ball. Some of them were simple, at least one of them was complicated, as he tipped a free kick up and over the bar, and maybe a keeper that’s not 6’7” doesn’t make that save. But he made it, just like he made five others, and so he heads into his second collegiate match with a career save percentage of 1.000.

Up Next: Another home match! On Sunday, Marquette will wrap up Move In Weekend by hosting Marist at Valley Fields, with first kick set for 2pm Central time. As I type this, the Red Foxes are down 1-0 in the second half on the road against Wisconsin in their season opener.