The Golden Eagles look to keep their two match unbeaten run going when the Huskies come to Valley Fields.
The conclusion of Sunday’s Marquette women’s soccer game marks the midway point of the Big East schedule. They’re currently through four matches with a record of 1-2-1, Sunday is #5, and then there’s five more to round out the rest of the league after that.
There are worse places to be than where Marquette is in the standings at the moment. Yes, they’re currently in ninth place with four points. Out of 11 teams. Not great…. but MU is also one match’s worth of points away from being in third place. Providence and Creighton are tied for third with six points, and there’s a four-way logjam for fifth place with five points, just one in front of Marquette.
Sunday’s match is against one of the teams in the five point logjam. Beat UConn, jump past UConn in the standings. Simple. Who knows where everyone else ends up after this weekend’s action, but you can only control what you can control. Marquette can control their chances to surpass the Huskies in the standings, so it’s obviously a good idea to do exactly that. Next match after Sunday? Also against a team currently in the four-way logjam.
Sure, it would be more fun to be 4-0-0 right now, but Marquette isn’t too bad off. They have big opportunities in front of them, and you can’t ask much more than that. Heck, the Golden Eagles are currently on a two match unbeaten streak, and a win or draw on Sunday will tie their season best streak in that regard. Immediate goals and big picture goals, all wrapped up together.
It occurs to me that soccer is a weird sport where goals are what you need to achieve your goals.
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Big East Match #5: vs Connecticut Huskies (7-3-3, 1-2-2 Big East)
Date: Sunday, October 13, 2024
Time: 1pm Central
Location: Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWSOC
Marquette is 6-4-2 all time against UConn. The section of the series when both teams were in the Big East together originally favored Marquette, as the Golden Eagles are winless in three tries against the Huskies in the last three seasons. Last year’s meeting was a scoreless draw in Storrs.
A 6-1-1 start to the season for UConn has been ruined by the requirement of playing Big East teams. It’s not all bad for the Huskies. One of their draws in league play was against then-#21 Xavier, and that’s currently throwing a wrench into the Musketeers’ attempt to win the regular season title as they’re tied with Georgetown at 4-0-1 at the moment. Then again, they also went to a draw with St. John’s, and the Red Storm are currently winless and sitting in the bottom of the table.
In short, UConn women’s soccer is a land of contrasts.
If Marquette wants to win this match, they’re going to need a plan for Chioma Okafor. The 5’5” forward from Malawi has a Big East best 11 goals on the season, and that league lead is not close. No one else currently has more than seven goals. Okafor is also the first (and still the only) woman in the Big East to get to 20 points this season, as her two assists nudge her up to 24 points on the year. All told, that’s Okafor contributing to 13 of UConn’s 26 goals in 2024. She’s also third in the team in minutes, so she’s not going anywhere for most of the match, and she has nearly twice as many shot attempts as anyone else. I’m not saying that if you shut her down it’s curtains for UConn…… but that’s definitely a better plan than letting her run wild.
MaryKate Ward has played the full 90 minutes in each of the last two contests for UConn after subbing in for the last 13 and change in the match before that. The UConn student newspaper’s recap of that Georgetown game doesn’t mention an injury for Kaitlyn Mahoney when noting Ward came on in relief, so that seems to be a tactical change for head coach Margaret Rodriguez. Mahoney’s stats on the year aren’t so hot — 1.22 goals-against average, .705 save percentage — so from that perspective, you can’t argue the point. Combined with 20 minutes of mop up duty earlier this season in a blowout win of Texas A&M, Ward is allowing just 0.84 goals per 90 minutes, and that’s after letting in two against Creighton last time out. Ward’s save percentage isn’t that much better than Mahoney’s at .714, but that’s also on about 20% of the minutes and 20% of the shots faced.