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The sun was shining, a state record 4,202 people were packing the stands at Hart Park, and Marquette was debuting brand new gold uniforms. Everything was set for a wonderful finale for the first season of Marquette men's lacrosse.
And then Brendan Fowler won the opening faceoff, ran right down and scored four seconds into the game.
Ok, that's fine, right? Fowler's great on faceoffs, Duke's peeved about how their ACC semifinal game ended, they wanted a quick start to the game.
Then Jake Tripucka scored 70 seconds in. And Myles Jones got on the board 1:43 into the game. Uh oh.
MU finally got a chance for some offense on the fourth faceoff of the game when Fowler committed a violation at the X. That finally caused the scoring to slow down, but Duke wasn't done opening a lead. Case Mathias got the fourth tally for the Blue Devils before Kyle Whitlow broke the Duke run. Whitlow's goal was the only MU marker in the first period, while Duke would go on to score six more to make it 10-1 when they switched ends.
Cullen Cassidy and Ben Dvorak ended up getting goals for Marquette by the end of the game.
Up Next: The offseason. Marquette finishes the season with a record of 5-8, and regardless of the tilted field in the finale, it was a successful season. Marquette got an opportunity to play five teams that qualified for the NCAA tournament, and, in the case of MAAC champion Detroit, even beat one of the teams in the tournament. It might still be a bit of a climb for the Golden Eagles to get into tournament contention, but it's apparent that the foundation has been set by this crew.