Big East Men's Soccer Tournament: #6 Marquette Loses To #3 Georgetown In Quarterfinals, 2-1

Georgetown put a ball into a net three times in less than five minutes in the Big East men's soccer tournament quarterfinals on Tuesday afternoon.  Two of them were past Marquette goalkeeper Charlie Lyon, and the #3 seed Hoyas defeated #6 seed Marquette, 2-1.  Georgetown advances to the semifinals on Friday night, where they'll play #2 seed Xavier.

The first half was pretty much just like the regular season match between Marquette and Georgetown.  They played to a 0-0 tie at halftime, with Georgetown having a slight advantage on shots, 5-4.  Georgetown's attack was a little more on target, as Lyon had to make two saves to keep the game scoreless.

The Hoyas opened up the scoring just before the one hour mark of the match.  Marquette committed a bad turnover at midfield that turned into a three on two break for Georgetown.  Melvin Snoh brought the action down the right flank and crossed it into the middle.  Axel Sjoberg committed to covering Brandon Allen's run into the middle of the field, leaving Arun Basuljevic available to collect it on the far corner of the 18 yard box.  Lyon charged out to cut down Basuljevic's angles, but he sent a hard roller to the far post and into the back of the net for the 1-0 lead.

Marquette got on the board less than two minutes later.  The Golden Eagles got a clean cross in to C. Nortey making a run onto the Georgetown net.  It looked like Nortey might have put a header on it to score, but officially, it went into the scorebook as an own goal.

With a new lease on life, Marquette had a fresh ball game to try to find another goal and advance to the semifinals.  But in the 65th minute, Christopher Lema took a chance and sent a ball through traffic in front of the Marquette net.  It found its way through to Austin Martz who got a clean touch on it and found the back of the net for the game winner.

Georgetown did an excellent job controlling the rest of the match to keep Marquette from challenging for an equalizer.  They outshot the Golden Eagles 2-1 over the rest of the match, as well as taking four corner kicks to prolong the agony for Marquette fans.

Lyon ended up making three saves while taking the loss, and Georgetown's Tomas Gomez never had to make a single save on a ball struck off of a Marquette player en route to the win.

With the loss, Marquette's long road to a second Big East tournament title comes to a quick end.  As of Monday, the Golden Eagles were #48 in the NCAA's RPI rankings, and the NCAA's men's soccer tournament only contains 48 teams.  Presuming a number of automatic bids coming in from lower ranked teams, it appears that the men's soccer season has likely ended with a record of 8-6-4.  The NCAA field will be announced next Monday afternoon, so we'll have to wait and see for the official word.