Marquette Men's Soccer Preview: at #10 Georgetown

With a pair of 1-0 wins, Marquette has found their way out of a four match losing streak and turned it into a different streak.  It's been over 190 minutes since freshman keeper Luis Barraza has given up a goal, and picking up the last two shutouts last week got Barraza named as Goalkeeper of the Week in the Big East.  Now, it's obviously not the kind of streak that Charlie Lyon put together a year ago, but it's a nice start to Wicho's collegiate career.

Perhaps those two straight shutouts do imply that Marquette's defense has started to come together.  The defense was going to be the biggest reconstruction project for head coach Louis Bennett this season, and while it hasn't been bad this season, it definitely needed improvement through the first nine matches of the season.  If there was a time that Marquette needed to be coming together as a team, it's definitely right now.  The next five matches of the schedule are against the five teams in the Big East that have been ranked at one point or another in 2015.  If they want to even qualify for one of the six spots in the conference tournament, MU is going to need to grab points from multiple teams over the next 17 days.

There's one other thing to keep an eye on today after Marquette finishes their game.  Creighton is visiting Butler tonight at 7pm.  If the Jays pick up the win, they will be 13-0-0 when they come to Valley Fields on Saturday night.

Big East Match #4: at #10 Georgetown (7-2-2, 3-0-0 Big East)

When: Wednesday, October 14, 2015, at 2pm Central
Where: Shaw Field in Washington, D.C.
Audio/Visual: The Big East Digital Network on Fox Sports Go has the video stream, plus there's live stats.
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteSoccer

The Hoyas woke up on the wrong side of the bed this season.  They went to a scoreless draw with Florida Gulf Coast to open the schedule (insert Dunk City joke here), and followed that up with losses at USF and at home to Akron.  That's a bad start.  But things got better in a hurry.  They upset #1 UCLA in their very next game, and Georgetown hasn't lost since.  In fact, they have only not won once on their eight match unbeaten streak, ending up in a 2-2 draw while visiting VCU on September 17th.

Brandon Allen and Alex Muyl are tied atop the Hoya scoresheet with four goals apiece, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone following Big East soccer.  Allen has a one point lead in that column, as he's got six assists against five from Muyl.  Aron Basuljevic joins those two in the top 10 in the Big East in assists, with the sophomore from Mahopac, NY, contributing three helpers of his own.

After four years of Tomas Gomez in net, the Hoyas have turned to a freshmen to take over this year.  JT Marcinkowski has started all 11 matches for Georgetown this season, and he's doing pretty well for himself.  He's been named Big East Goalkeeper of the Week once and Freshman of the Week twice already, which is pretty good.  Even better, he's got the second best goals-against average (0.80) and save percentage (.820) in the Big East.  You have to remember that the guy leading both categories is currently minding the net for the #1 and undefeated Creighton Bluejays, so that's almost like Marcinkowski's really leading the Big East amongst human keepers.