WSOC Settles For A Draw With Milwaukee

And so the all time series against the Panthers remains deadlocked at 11-11-9

Marquette women’s soccer scored first on Sunday at Valley Fields, but they couldn’t keep Milwaukee out of the net. The Golden Eagles only let in one goal, so that means their match with the Panthers goes into the books as a 1-1 draw. The all-time crosstown series is still a tie overall then, as Marquette and Milwaukee have each won 11 times and gone to a draw nine times.

MU got on the board in the 19th minute when Ella McAleenan flew and finished off an Emily Fix cross for a fantastic header goal. It’s McAleenan’s first career goal, which includes her freshman campaign at Lindenwood.

Milwaukee got level just barely under 10 minutes later, when Elizabeth Reece lifted a ball towards the net. I originally thought that MU keeper Chloe Olson put a finger tip or two on this, but the UWM tweet about the goal says it hit the crossbar. Fair enough. Either way, Olson played the ball at the peak of the arc, and that left her unable to get to the far post where Kayla Rollins just needed to poke the ball in the net.

Kind of similar goals if you think about it.

That ended up being it for goals on the day, and ultimately, the two styles displayed by the two teams caused a certain amount of stagnation in the scoring department. Milwaukee was content to methodically bring the ball through the middle, making lots of smaller passes to move it along, and then spray a shot in the general direction of the net. Marquette, on the other hand, wanted to get the ball wide more often than not, and they wanted to do it by way of big booming passes, sometimes low, sometimes high. What this led to was Marquette doing a great job finally turning away Milwaukee’s pressure and the Panthers being able to cut off the Golden Eagles’ attack before it manifested into something truly serious.

That’s how you end up with Milwaukee outshooting Marquette 15-8 here, but the match didn’t 100% feel lopsided. UWM only put five of those shots on frame, as Olson made just two saves in both halves to end up at the draw, while the Golden Eagles had three of their eight shots on goal. When Marquette got into position to make a shot, they were more likely than not to get a quality shot, so there is at least a little bit of a question as to whether or not the “kick go boom” passing style is a particularly advantageous situation for the Golden Eagles.

At least in this match.

Up Next: Marquette has one more non-conference match to take care of before they start Big East play on Sunday. They’ll be back at Valley Fields on Thursday night to tangle with St. Thomas, with first kick set for 5pm Central time. No, I don’t know why so early, much like I don’t know why Sunday’s kick was late afternoon. The Tommies are 4-3-1 this season and coming off a 2-0 victory against Western Illinois back on Friday.