Marquette Women's Soccer Picked To Finish 4th; Two Players Named To Preseason All-Conference Team

The Big East has announced the results of the preseason voting by the league's women's soccer coaches.  Marquette is picked to finish fourth in the Big East this season, behind preseason co-favorites DePaul & St. John's, as well as 3rd place finisher Georgetown.  Two Golden Eagles, forward Liz Bartels and defender Morgan Proffitt were named to the preseason all-Big East team.

Bartels was the easy choice of the two for the Big East's coaches, as she finished on the all-Big East First Team a year ago after finishing the year tied for the seventh most assists in the league.  Proffitt is the more surprising choice, as I would have gone with Jacie Jermier if I was choosing between Marquette defenders.  Both women were Second Team all-Big East a year ago, so maybe it's just a matter of preference of style.  I do like those free kick goals from Jermier an awful lot, though.

Here's the full voting results for the team ballot, with total points at the end and first place votes in parentheses:

T1. DePaul (4) - 73
T1. St. John's (4) - 73
3. Georgetown (2) - 70
4. Marquette - 60
5. Providence - 47
6. Butler - 42
7. Villanova - 31
8. Creighton - 24
9. Seton Hall - 19
10. Xavier - 11

There's a very clear plateau in the voting, although it comes with Marquette standing near the very edge.  With Georgetown just three points behind the co-leaders and Marquette just 10 points behind them, it's clear that the coaches all agree that those are the top four teams.  The drop off past the top four gets pretty steep fairly quickly, although Xavier is not a unanimous choice to finish last.

As for the predictions on the top five that were laid out in our predictions post... well, let's get to the individual award winners and the all-Big East team first, because context is required.

BIG EAST Preseason Co-Offensive Players of the Year
Rachel Daly, St. John's, Sr., F
Catherine Zimmerman, Providence, Sr., F

BIG EAST Preseason Defensive Player of the Year
Georgia Kearney-Perry, St. John's, Grad., D

BIG EAST Preseason Goalkeeper of the Year
Diana Poulin, St. John's, Jr., GK

Preseason All-Big East Team:
Liz Bartels, Marquette, Jr., M/F
Alexa Ben, DePaul, So., M
Rachel Corboz, Georgetown, So., M
Rachel Daly, St. John's, Sr., F*
Sarah Gorden, DePaul, Grad., D
Serina Kashimoto, Butler, Jr., M
Georgia Kearney-Perry, St. John's, Grad., D*
Sophia Maccagnone, Butler, Sr., M*
Emma Newins, Georgetown, Grad., GK
Marina Paul, Georgetown, Sr., M
Diana Poulin, St. John's, Jr., GK
Morgan Proffitt, Marquette, Jr., D
Abby Reed, DePaul, Jr., F
Elise Wyatt, DePaul, Sr., F
Catherine Zimmerman, Providence, Sr., F*

The asterisks note the unanimous selections to the all-conference squad.  There are 15 players listed because there were ties in the voting at some point in the process, although it seems obvious that goalkeeper is one of the ties.

I want to turn your attention to the three players listed as "Graduate Students" on that list.  All three were listed as "seniors" in the balloting at the end of the 2014 season, and as such, none of them made it into our predictions post, and in fact, the understand that St. John's was losing Kearney-Perry for this season is one of the reasons why I picked them to finish fifth.  If you have players that have a year of eligibility remaining, don't list them as seniors.  If they're graduating in just three years and didn't take a redshirt year, well, good for them.  But you're screwing over people like me who are trying to give attention to your sport who just do not have the time or the energy to call every single school in the Big East to make sure that all the seniors actually graduated.  Help me help you.

Anyway.

I have significant problems with two of the three individual awards.  Kearney-Perry wasn't my pick, but I also didn't think she was coming back this season, so that barely counts.  No, I have problem with the other two.  For Offensive Player, it's a tie between the player that finished with the fifth most points in the Big East last season and the player that had the ninth most points when Elise Wyatt, who had the most points of any returning player, is just sitting out there in the cold.  I understand the potential scoring prowess of Daly and to a lesser extent Zimmerman, but they didn't have it last year while Wyatt did.  Goalkeeper is just a continuation of the lie that Diana Poulin is better than DePaul's Alejandra Godinez, which I wrote about when Godinez got hosed in last year's postseason awards and then again in this year's predictions post.  Did everyone forget that Godinez was the keeper that went 20 straight matches without a loss last season?  That's not an accident.  What a bunch of tree hugging hippie crap.

Thanks to a bonus four players on the all-conference team, I finished with eight correct predictions, and the ones I missed on are all explainable: Godinez should be the GK by a wide, wide, wide margin, and Georgetown's Emily Damstrom and Marquette's Jacie Jermier were elbowed off the team by Sarah Gorden & GKP being eligible.  From my view, it seems that Corboz and Reed elbowed their way onto the team via ties, although Reed did finish tied for the most goals in the Big East last season.