The Golden Eagles visit the Rocky Mountains as the first unranked opponent of the season for the Buffaloes.
I believe that Tuesday afternoon’s lacrosse game for the Marquette women’s squad presents an interesting conflict of two teams looking to prove something to themselves.
On one hand, you have Marquette, 4-0 against unranked opponents this season and looking to keep that run going. On the other hand, you have Colorado, which is sitting at 1-4 on the year after doing nothing but playing ranked opponents through five games. Marquette is coming off a 19-9 loss to #3 Northwestern where the Golden Eagles at least prompted a “hey, let’s get it together out there” type of conversation from a Wildcats team that, on paper, had the superior firepower. Colorado has only been lopsided once this season, and that happens to be the time that they tangled with that same Northwestern team. They’ve gone into battle with ranked foe after ranked foe after starting the season in the Inside Lacrosse top 25 poll themselves, but they’ve come up short at the final horn four times.
Both teams have something to prove. Marquette wants to prove that the level of frustration that they handed Northwestern is more in line with the kind of team that they are this season. Colorado wants to prove that they deserved that preseason top 25 ranking and take care of business against their first unranked opponent this season.
That’s a lot on the line for a kind of random middle of the day/middle of the week lacrosse game!
And, uh, well, with MU undefeated against unranked opponents so far this season, and with just four non-conference games left on the slate, we have to note that this one would kind of be a big deal for Marquette’s possible postseason future. Just saying.
Game #7: at Colorado Buffaloes (1-4)
Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Time: 2pm Central
Location: Kittredge Field, Boulder, Colorado
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWLax
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 0-4 all time against Colorado. The series started with a 13-5 loss in 2015 and ran for three years. It started up again last year as the Golden Eagles lost 17-11 to the then-#19 ranked Buffaloes.
At first glance, you would look at Colorado’s 1-4 record and say “ah, yes, this should be a game that Marquette can win, hooray for that.” Yeah, so, about that. The Buffaloes started out the season at #23 in the Inside Lacrosse preseason top 25 poll. They have done nothing but play ranked teams to start the season, going #15 Stanford, #24 USC, #3 Northwestern, #25 Army, and #5 Michigan in their first five contests. The win came against Army, as CU prevailed 12-6 in their home opener.
Colorado was competitive in three of the four losses, falling 20-5 to Northwestern as the outlier. That’s the same Northwestern squad that took a 19-9 game from Marquette back on Friday, so I’ll let you figure out the comparative situation there after saying Northwestern started out up 7-0 and led 15-1 late in the third quarter. Michigan is the other opponent in common here, and the Buffs were up 1-0 on the Wolverines at the end of the first quarter and up 5-3 in the third before taking a 12-7 loss. Marquette was down 13-3 at halftime there, so again: I’ll let you figure out the comparison situation in those two games.
I don’t know if it’s fair to take anything away from Colorado’s analytics at this point given the level of challenge that they set for themselves to start the season, but I will link you to their Lacrosse Reference page and merely say that there are 131 teams playing D1 lacrosse. As far as players to watch, Madeline Pisani is averaging two goals a game for CU, and her 10 strikes combine with three assists for a team high 13 points. The grad student from Illinois was the preseason Big 12 Attack Player of the Year after averaging 4.2 points per game last year powered by more than a hat trick per game, and she’s had just two hat tricks this season so far. Clearly there’s a breakout game coming for her, especially since she leads the team in shots.
MU is going to have to watch out for Lily Assini, as the 5’4” junior is already up to seven assists on the year to hold a second-best on the squad nine points in total. The Buffs have a trio of women averaging just over a goal per game with six so far this season, so they’ve got some options that might be slightly under-par in terms of expectations right now because of the schedule that the Buffaloes have gone through so far.
Freshman Elena Oh has had the net for Colorado’s last three games, taking over from Danielle Heintz after the first two outings. Heintz was stopping just 23% of shots on goal in the first two games of the year, so Oh got the nod in #3, which turned into the 15 goal loss to Northwestern where she gave up 15 on 21 shots on frame and was pulled after 39 minutes. Oh has gone the distance in the last two, so through nearly 160 minutes of action, she has a goals-against average of 12.49 and a save percentage of .459. You can win a lot of lacrosse games stopping over 45% of shots on goal, and 12 saves on 18 SOG against Army was a big reason why the Buffs picked up that win.