Marquette Women's Lacrosse: at Saint Mary's

Marquette women's lacrosse sits at 2-3 on the 2015 season.  The Golden Eagles opened with three straight losses, although two were to ranked opponents.  Now, though, they find themselves on a two match winning streak.  Even more impressively, they have won both of those games in overtime.  Now, women's lacrosse plays a full 6 minute period of overtime, not sudden victory rules like men's lacrosse.  On one level, it takes something off of Marquette's accomplishment, because they just had to have the lead at the end, regardless of who scored first.  On the other hand, it meant that they had to get a lead and hold on to it, which is more impressive than being able to score on the first possession of overtime like in the men's game.

If the Golden Eagles come away with the victory, they will move to .500 on the season, and give them a shot at moving above .500 for the first time in program history later this week.  It will also be the first three game winning streak in program history, so there's a little bit riding on this one.

With seven goals and five assists this season, Claire Costanza continues to build on her program record for career points.  She's not the team leader in goals, though, as that honor goes to Taylor Smith and her nine goals on the season.  Through the first five games of 2015, goalie Sarah Priem is playing the best she ever has in a blue & gold uniform.  Her save percentage of .400 and goals-against average of 8.11 are both career bests.

Game #6: at Saint Mary's (0-4)

When: Tuesday, March 10, 2015, at 6pm Central
Where: SMC Recreation Field in Moraga, CA
Audio/Visual: It looks like we've got free live video plus live stats.
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWLax

Things have not gone in favor of the Gaels to start the season.  They were picked to finish last in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation's preseason poll, and in fact, they picked up every single last place vote.  This includes the vote from first year head coach Jessica Mucci, who, it should be noted, is *not* the attacker for Villanova.

After that, SMC had two straight conference games to start the season.  Losing 18-10 to California isn't particularly super, but a 21-3 loss to Oregon is definitely worse.  The Gaels turned to non-conference contests for their next two games, and that went as about as well as the first two matches.  Detroit caught them by a final of 16-6, and in their most recent game, Saint Mary's fell 22-8 to Michigan.

I'm not saying they're not capable of beating Marquette, but this is a rare time when Marquette is the clear favorite to win a game, and they need to come through with the W.

While the Gaels are not winning games, they do have a talented scorer on the roster.  Senior midfielder Jaclyn Biggers has tallied eight goals on the season, so even while her team is struggling on offense, she's still finding time for two goals per game.  Freshman Claire Healy's doing a pretty good job, too, totalling five goals on this still young season.  Healy is one of three Gaels who have three assists on the season, which moves her within one point of Biggers for the team lead in that category.

Sydney Pinello has played every minute in net for SMC, and as you can imagine, she doesn't have great stats to go along with that.  She's stopping just 26.7% of shots on goal this season, and allowing 19.25 goals per 60 minutes.