The Golden Eagles hit the road for a pair of matches in need of a goal, not to mention their first Big East win.
Marquette women’s soccer is the only team in the Big East without a point in the standings.
Now, that’s not the biggest deal in the world, as there’s still eight league matches left to go this season. There is, mathematically speaking, lots of time for the Golden Eagles to figure out how to stack up enough points to get into the conference tournament.
However, coming out of this coming weekend with no points will be a real problem for Marquette. Not only will they only have six matches remaining, but three of those six matches will be against the teams that are still without a loss in conference play. You can see how that, mathematically speaking, starts working against the Golden Eagles.
That’s the big picture for Marquette. More immediately? The Golden Eagles need to figure out how to score a goal. They’re -2 in goal differential in Big East play because they’ve lost 1-0 twice. However, MU is also dead last in the league in shots attempted with just 13. They’ve given up 25 shots, and generally speaking, getting doubled up there is bad. This isn’t a new problem for the Golden Eagles. Take out the nine goals against Mercyhurst and St. Thomas, and MU has put the ball in the net just four times this season. We can’t even say “well, at least Marquette is being precise about their shot attempts,” because the Golden Eagles have a lower shots-on-goal ratio than their opponents.
I don’t even think there’s generally speaking a fix for this for Marquette. If there was, head coach Chris Allen would have already moved towards it. But for now, what Marquette’s doing isn’t working, and the chances to do something positive with this season are quickly dwindling as a result of that.
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Big East Match #3: at St. John’s Red Storm (5-2-4, 0-1-2 Big East)
Date: Thursday, October 3, 2024
Time: 6pm Central
Location: Belson Stadium, Jamaica, New York
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWSOC
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 16-2-2 all time against St. John’s. The series has gone like this: 10 Marquette wins, a draw, a St. John’s win, six Marquette wins, a draw, a St. John’s win, and that one was last year’s result in Queens. Seems to me like history says a Golden Eagle winning streak is about to start up, yeah?
Having access to the NCAA’s RPI team sheets is very helpful when writing these previews at this point of the season. For example: How do you lineup St. John’s holding a 5-2-4 record overall with their winless start to Big East play? Simple! St. John’s played one top 130 opponent in non-conference play, and that was a 1-0 loss to Yale. They went to a scoreless draw with the only other top 200 team they played — that was Monmouth — and so yeah, it’s not a surprise that they lost to Providence (#108) or drew with Seton Hall (#205).
It is a little surprising that the Red Storm went to a draw with #40 UConn….. until you look at how that happened. STJ scored all three of their goals in less than 12 minutes, leading 3-0 as the clock hit 33:00…… and yet it was 3-2 at halftime. PRO TIP: Don’t do things that give up penalty kicks when you have a 3-0 lead. UConn got the equalizer less than five minutes into the second half on their way to outshooting St. John’s 15-1 after intermission. Tip of the cap to the Red Storm for weathering the Huskies’ attack, but they were holding on for dear life with five UConn shots coming in the final 10 minutes and two in the final minute in particular.
St. John’s is outshooting teams overall this season, led by more than 20 shots each from Jailene DeJesus and Jordyn Levy. Those are the top two on the points list as well, as they each have 10 right now. Levy has the team lead in goals at five, while DeJesus has two assists to go with her four goals. Athina Sofroniou is the leader in assists with three, while Lauryn Tran is the only other player to score more than one goal so far this year.
Marquette’s probably going to see two different keepers in this match. Kayla Bower has started each of the last seven contests, but Malene Nielsen has played in all 11 matches after starting the first four of the year. Nielsen has come on in relief at halftime in the last three contests and six of the seven where Bower started. I’m not exactly sure what caused the switch, but statistically speaking, Marquette is best served by coming out strong against the Red Storm. There’s not much of a statistical difference between the two women, but perhaps partially because she’s played about half as many minutes, Bower has the worse goals-against average and the worse save percentage.
Big East Match #4: at DePaul Blue Demons (2-5-3, 0-1-1 Big East)
Date: Sunday, October 6, 2024
Time: 1pm Central
Location: Wish Field, Chicago, Illinois
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWSOC
Marquette is 20-6-2 all time against DePaul. I keep forgetting that this series is heavily tilted towards Marquette because I fervently remember the run of Loss/Draw in the Big East tournament/Loss in 2014 and 2015 as part of the formative years of paying attention to this team for this website. In fairness to DePaul, when the timeshifted 2020 season started up, Marquette only had a 15-6-2 advantage in the series, so things have gotten even more lopsided in the past couple of years.
Marquette and DePaul share a victory on the schedule this season. Both teams got a 1-0 win over Illinois-Chicago. The Blue Demons got their by scoring in the fifth minute and then hanging on for dear life as they got doubled up in shots in the second half. Their second win of the season came one match later as they beat Lindenwood 2-0 at home a week later. DePaul is 0-1-2 since then, managing just one 86th minute goal to steal a draw with a Western Michigan team that beat Marquette before getting shutout in both contest in Big East play. They returned the favor to Butler last timeout as they did win the shots battle, 11-7, and so that’s why DePaul is in front of MU in the standings.
The offensive situation in this one is going to be interesting, seeing as DePaul is getting outshot 10.0 to 7.5 on average this season. Freya Jupp is the team leader in points and goals, getting to six on the former with three of the latter. The junior from England had the lone goal in the draw with WMU, so she’s the most recent Blue Demon to tally a goal. No one else has more than one goal, and Lea Eisenring is the only woman with multiple assists. That’s probably more about DePaul’s goal scoring, as they only have five of their own overall right now, plus an own goal along the way. MU will have to mind the presence of Briley Hill, as the redshirt junior from Nebraska is leading the team in shots.
Elena Milam will handle the netminding after playing all but 11 minutes this season. She’s just barely over 70% in terms of save percentage, and DePaul getting outshot on the year is probably not helping her all that much. It’s definitely not helping her goals-against average, which sits at 1.42 on the season heading into Thursday afternoon’s road tilt against Villanova.