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When: Wednesday, March 19, at 5pm Central
Where: Arlotta Stadium, in South Bend, IN
Audio/Visual: I'll give the Irish this: They do streaming video the right way, and that's for free on WatchND.com. You can add live stats to your experience, too.
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWLax
Last year, Marquette wrapped up their first season of Division 1 action with a 14-5 loss to a #9 ranked Notre Dame team that went on to lose in the first round of the NCAA tournament after somehow not actually qualifying for the Big East tournament. Crap, that conference was nuts last year. All five goals that day came from Hayley Baas (3) and Kenzie Brown (2). Those two goals from Brown put her on 24 for the 17 game season.
I bring this up because this year, through just seven games, both Baas and Julianna Shearer have 12 goals. They're both halfway to the single season scoring record, and we're not even halfway through the season yet. In related news, Amanda Bochniak is at 10 assists for the year, just short of half of the 22 assists that Claire Costanza had last year. If nothing else this season, the addition of Shearer and Bochniak to the Marquette attack has greatly improved the skill level on the offensive end.
The Irish on the other hand, well, I'm going to guess that they're pissed off. By now, you've probably noticed that three in their record up at the top of the page. Here's who Notre Dame has lost to this season:
- Current #4 ranked Boston College, 15-10
- Current #1 ranked North Carolina, 19-9
- Current #2 ranked Maryland in their most recent game, 16-10
For those of you that have kept a close eye on conference realignment over the last year or so, you've already figured out that the Irish took all three of those losses in ACC conference play. Still on the conference slate this season: #3 Syracuse, #10 Duke, and #18 Virginia. At least they have that win over unranked Virginia Tech to fall back on, I guess....
In any case, the Irish have four players with double digit goal totals through just nine games, led by a whopping 24 from freshman Cortney Fortunato. Five assists give Fortunato the points lead as well, but junior Caitlin Gargan has the team lead in assists with eight to go along with her 15 goals on the year. Junior goalie Allie Murray has started all nine contests for head coach Christine Halfpenny, and she's compiled a goals-against average of 10.09 in just over 400 minutes played, and she's stopping 44% of the shots that come on net.