9.14 Weekend Preview: Big Ten Flavored

Here we are, back again with another weekend of events to preview! Women's soccer already got started last night with a 5-1 win over Pitt and there's a brief preview of their Sunday afternoon match in the Valley against George Mason over in our recap of the Pitt game.

Men's soccer (5-0-0) comes into the weekend ranked #13 in the country by Soccer America and #17 in the country by the NSCAA coaches' poll. These are the kinds of things that happen when you reel off five straight wins to open the season, particularly if four of them are by shutting out your opponent. Eric Pothast leads MU in goals with three and leads MU and the Big East in game winning goals with - wait for it - three. Pothast is tied with Axel Sjoberg for the team lead in assists at two each. Charlie Lyon's brick wall impression over the last four matches has dropped his goals-against average to just 0.40. Somehow, that's only good enough for third in the Big East, as Syracuse's Alex Bono and Connecticut's Andre Blake are lower than that.

Women's volleyball (7-2) isn't ranked, but they are receiving votes in the AVCA polling. Lindsay Gosh leads the Golden Eagles in kills per set, but her 3.19 average doesn't crack the top 10 in the Big East. Of course, with four different players averaging over 2.5 kills per set, it's not really something to be worried about. Danielle Carlson and Kelsey Mattai are MU's top two attackers by hitting percentage, and they sit at #2 and #5 in the conference as well.

Hit the jump and we'll look at Marquette's opponents on the weekend!

Men's soccer plays two matches as part of the Big East/Big Ten Challenge this weekend. They'll get started tonight in the Valley at 7pm against Michigan (2-2-0). One lucky student in attendance will win a long sleeve Lionel Messi FC Barcelona jersey! This will be the second time that the Wolverines face a Big East team after losing to #5 South Florida in their opener. They'll follow it up by returning to Ann Arbor to face a third ranked Big East team in Notre Dame. Seniors Latif Alashe and Kofi Opare have both scored two goals for Michigan and sophomore Adam Grinwis has a goals-against average of 1.50 while playing every minute for the Wolverines.

Coach Bennett's squad heads to East Lansing for their second Big East/Big Ten Challenge match, this time against Michigan State (2-3-1). The Spartans have split two matches against Big East competition so far this season, with a shutout loss at home to Connecticut and a win in their most recent match at Providence. No Spartan has managed more than a single goal or assist all season, but Domenic Barone and Cody Henderson have one of each. Bryce Dobbins has gotten all the minutes in net and has a goals-against average of 0.94.

The volleyball team hosts their third and final non-conference tournament this weekend as Pacific, Iowa, and UW-Milwaukee come to the Al McGuire Center for the Marquette Invitational. The Golden Eagles start with Pacific tonight at 7pm before playing Iowa tomorrow at 1:30pm and UUWM at 7pm. It will be "Bust Out Your Blue" night for the match against UWM tomorrow night, as the first 250 fans will receive blue pom-poms and anyone wearing blue can get in for just $2! As for you students out there, you always get in for free, but now you have an extra incentive to show up early:

I wonder if we can convince Coach Shymansky to wear those for a match...