Women’s Soccer Nets Allen’s First Big East Win

The Golden Eagles did offense in the first half and defense in the second half to beat St. John’s on Thursday night.

First of all, my apologies to everyone who might have been interested in watching Marquette women’s soccer on their visit to New York on Thursday night. When I wrote the preview, I checked MU’s official schedule page, and that had the game streaming on FloSports, and that’s what I put in the preview. TURNS OUT, St. John’s apparently still has their weird offshoot third tier ESPN deal, so the game was on ESPN+, and I presume many more of you have that subscription. My bad for not checking in with St. John’s to make sure we were all on the same page!

ANYWAY, the point of the story is that MARQUETTE WON, possibly because the soccer gods did not like the Red Storm deceiving us by way of the broadcasting. The Golden Eagles beat St. John’s 2-1, and it was in a pretty interesting manner all things considered.

First, there was this really nifty goal by Emily Fix, although to be honest, the pass by Haley Christianson is almost better, as long as we all believe that Christianson was actually trying to get it to Fix at the very far post.

That was in the 11th minute of the game, but Marquette’s lead did not last very long. St. John’s pulled out an equalizer in the 14th minute, getting this one-timer goal from Jailene DeJesus. The quick redirect on the Lauryn Tran pass caught MU keeper Elise Krone in a bad position to recover and make the save.

The goals came on the third and fourth combined shots of the match, which would seem to tell you that we were getting closer to the fireworks factory, but we never really got there. The two squads ended up combining for 10 total shots in the first half, so things got a little bit slow, at least until the 32nd minute, when a free kick from out towards midfield popped up in the air and then got pushed back on net by Ella McAleenan’s head for her second goal of the season.

That 2-1 margin held through to halftime, partially because of the “only 10 total shots” thing, and so the question at the break became “what will the generally speaking offensively challenged Marquette do to protect this margin for 45 minutes?” The answer turned out to be “absolutely handcuff the Johnnies’ attack the whole time while ripping another seven shots off of their own.”

I’ll be honest, I didn’t have that one on my bingo card.

Marquette outshot St. John’s 7-0 after halftime, and the Golden Eagles were knocking on the door of a third goal, too. They forced keeper Kayla Bower, who came in at halftime in relief of Malene Nielsen, to make four saves to keep it as a one goal margin, and MU also racked up four corner kicks. That’s notable, as the broadcast told us that head coach Chris Allen told them that it’s a team goal to get at least four corner kicks per half.

The win moves Marquette to 4-7-2 on the year and 1-2-0 in Big East action. Not only is it the first Big East win of the year, but it’s also Allen’s first Big East win as MU head coach. The three points from the victory jumps the Golden Eagles out of last place in the league as they were the only team without a point in the standings, and now they’re right in the mix of things. Three points is good enough for seventh place in the conference, and it’s still early enough where there’s chances to keep moving up and into the top six for a Big East tournament berth.

Up Next: One of those chances is on Sunday when Marquette heads down I-94 to visit DePaul. First kick at Wish Field is set for 1pm Central on October 6th, and FloSports will have the broadcast…. I think. DePaul is 0-1-2 in Big East play after going to a 1-1 draw with Villanova on Thursday.