As Marquette starts Big East play against Butler on Saturday, we take a quick swing around the league to see what everyone has been doing.
This is officially the game preview for Marquette Golden Eagles at Butler, so let’s get the details into place here…….
Big East Game #1: at Butler Bulldogs (0-6)
Date: Saturday, March 22, 2025
Time: 11am Central
Location: Varsity Field, Indianapolis, Indiana
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWLax
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is a perfect 8-0 all time against Butler. The series started in 2017 when the Bulldogs started up their program. After four straight lopsided blowouts to start the series, Butler has kept it within at least eight goals in each of the last four meetings, including 20-12 last year in Milwaukee.
REMINDER: Marquette’s home contests are streamed nearly exclusively on FloSports, and the same goes for almost all Big East home games and almost all league schedule contests. If you are paying full price for FloSports at $30 a month, you are doing it wrong. Please use this link to pay $20 via the new-ish FloCollege offering.
Since this is the Big East opener on Saturday for Marquette, instead of just looking at the Bulldogs, we’re going to whip around the entire Big East to see what everyone has been doing to this point of the season. This is one of those “I’m doing it for research and knowledge reasons, so I may as well type something out and publish it” things.
For each team, you’ve got a quick info dump: Lacrosse Reference ranking, RPI ranking (because the NCAA has those up already, hooray), stat leaders, and best win/worst loss, which is going by the RPI team sheets. After that, I’ll give you a little bit of insight about what each team looks like so far this season.
Let’s get into it!
Denver
Record: 5-4
LaxRef Ranking: #17
RPI Ranking: #19
Inside Lacrosse Poll Ranking: #25
Points Leader: Lauren Black, 35
Goals Leader: Lauren Black, 27
Assists Leader: Raegan Wilson, 17
Primary Goalie: Emelia Bohi; 11.07 GAA, .405 SV%
Best Win: vs #15 Michigan, 13-11
Worst Loss: #26 Louisville, 10-8
Denver started off the season at #15 in the Inside Lacrosse preseason poll, so still being ranked at 5-4 overall is still pretty good news for them. Three of the four losses very much show up as “yeah, well, so what?” type of losses: 9-5 at now-#18 Ohio State, 14-10 at now-#4 Maryland, and 17-8 at home against now-#19 Stony Brook. Okay, that last one’s a bit more of a problem, and that’s probably going to send them out of the top 25 on the next update seeing as it happened on Tuesday afternoon.
But even with the losses, there’s no reason to think that Denver’s not the favorite to win the Big East right now. UConn’s the only team that can boast a win that’s better than DU’s worst loss, and that’s a one spot in the RPI difference. Maybe the margins are a little bit closer than they have been in years past, so maybe that means there’s a league loss looming for Denver this year. If they can figure out the offense — #83 in efficiency per LaxRef, even against this schedule, #17 on defense — then maybe not so much on the loss situation.
UConn
Record: 6-3
LaxRef Ranking: #25
RPI Ranking: #36
Points Leader: Rayea Davis, 36
Goals Leader: Rayea Davis, 29
Assists Leader: Jenna Giardina, 20
Primary Goalie: Tori Cini; 10.19 GAA (#1), .458 SV% (#1)
Best Win: vs #25 UMass, 19-16
Worst Loss: at #18 Harvard, 13-12 (OT)
Feels like “hey, let’s test ourselves, oops, that didn’t go so great” is a bit of a theme for the Big East here this year. UConn’s three losses this season are to the current #7, #11, and #22 ranked teams in the country. We were about to say that the results weren’t all too bad, as the first two tries were by a combined four goals, but their game against now-#7 Yale went 17-8 against them. We should give the Huskies credit for beating Drexel, as the Dragons were ranked #24 for the season opener, and they’re still at #23.
Most of UConn’s offense is running through Rayea Davis and Eliza Bowman, who has 25 goals right now, and both women are just barely under 50/50 on whether or not one of their shots goes in the net. UConn’s fate this season isn’t hurt by the fact that they’ve got the statistically best goalkeeper in the Big East, as Tori Cini is tops in both save percentage and goals against average.
Marquette
Record: 5-3
LaxRef Ranking: #48
RPI Ranking: #41
Points Leader: Meg Bireley, 42 (#1 in points per game)
Goals Leader: Meg Bireley, 31 (#1 in goals per game)
Assists Leader: Meg Bireley, 11
Primary Goalie: Brynna Nixon, 14.35 GAA, .370 SV%
Best Win: vs #26 Louisville, 13-10
Worst Loss: at #15 Michigan, 22-5
This is a Marquette blog, so we’ve done a lot and will continue to do a lot of talking about the Golden Eagles. I will merely point out that Meg Bireley is not only #1 in the Big East in points and goals per game, but also #15 in the country in both categories, and that Marquette has their own “well, we tried something” losses to #3 Northwestern and #12 Michigan, as well as a game against a Colorado squad that had a ranking in the preseason but hasn’t gotten back into the polls because they started out the year with a 1-4 record against five ranked teams.
Onwards, then…….
Georgetown
Record: 5-4
LaxRef Ranking: #55
RPI Ranking: #35
Points Leader: Hanna Bishop, 31
Goals Leader: Gracie Driggs, 27
Assists Leader: Anne McGovern, 16
Primary Goalie: Leah Warehime; 10.59 GAA, .419 SV%
Best Win: at #37 Delaware, 20-14
Worst Loss: vs #49 Towson, 10-9 (2 OT)
Three of Georgetown’s four losses this season: #4 Maryland, #6 Johns Hopkins, and #17 Loyola Maryland. That’s just signing up to save some money on travel and it happens to be a series of major problems. Worth nothing that the score against the Terrapins was just 9-7, by the way.
The fourth loss is in overtime against Towson, and yeah, that’s their worst loss of the year. Kind of a separator from the first couple teams we’ve talked about here. Credit to Georgetown on scoring the tying goal to force overtime, but that did snap a run of nearly a full quarter of the game without a goal from the Hoyas after they had an 8-6 lead in the third. Also a problem: Towson taking three different penalties in overtime and the Hoyas not finding a way to get the sudden winner in the extra session.
I am intrigued by Georgetown’s offense as they’re the only one in the league that doesn’t have their points leader atop the column for either goals or assists. Obviously the other teams have multiple threats below their leaders, but Georgetown’s succeeding in a different way, one that provides a little bit deeper threat, I think.
Villanova
Record: 6-3
LaxRef Ranking: #57
RPI Ranking: #39
Points Leader: Sami Carey, 42
Goals Leader: Sydney Pappas, 22
Assists Leader: Sami Carey, 27 (#1 in assists per game)
Primary Goalie: Cate Gallagher; 8.12 GAA, .392 SV%
Best Win: vs #53 St. Joseph’s, 14-10
Worst Loss: vs #28 Navy, 17-16
On the “We tried something” board for the Wildcats: Losses to #5 Stanford, #19 Stony Brook, and #24 Navy.
That means that they do come into Big East play riding a three game winning streak, but that streak did start with a 10-9 win in overtime against UC Davis. It was on the road against the Aggies, so that’s maybe part of what happened here, but UC Davis is also just 2-6 on the year, and Nova gave up the game tying goal with nine seconds left in regulation after their last goal came with 8:40 to play.
Villanova’s offense does have the unique trick where their assists leader is their points leader, not the goals leader. Sami Carey has an 11 point lead on Sydney Pappas in the points column, not to mention 15 goals of her own on the year. That’s an interesting arrangement, and it’s one that has the Wildcats posting an assist on more than half their goals this season. Drop out their free position strikes, and that number pops up to 66.3%.
Xavier
Record: 1-7
LaxRef Ranking: #122
RPI Ranking: #111
Points Leader: Lola Mancuso, 32
Goals Leader: Lola Mancuso, 28
Assists Leader: Megan Droney, 6
Primary Goalie: Teegan Lannon; 15.78 GAA, .373 SV%
Only Win: vs #129 Gardner-Webb, 13-5
Worst Loss: vs #104 Wofford, 14-12
This is Year Three for Xavier women’s lacrosse, and it’s looking to be their worst one yet. The Musketeers won four games in each of their first two seasons of competition, and now they start Big East play with just one win on the year. Five games against teams that were testing themselves against ranked foes, so that sounds an awful lot like five scheduled losses for Xavier, and I don’t hold out a lot of hope for their last remaining non-conference game against Vanderbilt.
Butler
Record: 0-6
LaxRef Ranking: #124
RPI Ranking: #114
Points Leader: Elise Latham, 16
Goals Leader: Elise Latham, 13
Assists Leader: Elise Latham & Emma Palmer, 3
Primary Goalie: Alyssa Lentz; 14.20 GAA, .418 SV%
Worst Loss: vs #102 Eastern Michigan, 10-4
And at least Xavier has a win.
This is Butler’s ninth season as a Division 1 program, and there is a very strong chance that it will be their worst. They won one game in 2017, 2018, and 2021, although 2021 was The Weird Season and I’m willing to hand wave that one, especially since the Bulldogs won six and five games in the two seasons following it.
They’ve scored 10 goals in a game just once this season, and the 10-4 loss to Eastern Michigan is their best defensive performance of the year. They still have non-conference games against UC Davis and Central Michigan mixed in to the rest of the year, but there’s not a lot of things to be intrigued or excited about here.