Marquette Women’s Soccer Preview: at Xavier

It’s possible that Marquette may have found their footing for the season.

The offense appears to be humming, scoring 12 goals in the last five matches. After a trio of games where the Golden Eagles took a 2-0 lead before giving that lead back to their opponent, MU has held their last two opponents to one combined goal. In fact, Sunday’s shutout of St. John’s was the first clean sheet of the year for Marquette, and the first in the collegiate career of keeper Maddy Henry.

Now, it’s possible that this is all just goodwill from beating the Red Storm. The Johnnies struggle to score goals this season even though they’re leading the conference in shots per game, and both goals that Marquette scored on reigning two-time Big East Keeper of the Year Diana Poulin were a little bit on the fluke-ish side.

Still, the trend is going in an upwards direction right now, and after starting the season 4-4-1, Marquette is sitting at 2-1-0 in league action and in third place with six points. They’re also going to get a quality opportunity to firm up their spot in the table when they head out on the road for Thursday’s encounter.

If you live in the Cincinnati area and plan on attending the match, do not go to Xavier’s campus. Y’all are familiar with the heavy rain that you had fall recently, and Xavier’s soccer facility was damaged as a result. Instead, the match will be on the campus of Northern Kentucky University

Big East Match #4: at Xavier (6-6-1, 0-3-0 Big East)

When: Thursday, October 6, 2016, at 5:30pm CT
Where: NKU Soccer Stadium in Highland Heights, KY
Audio/Visual: The Big East Digital Network on Fox Sports Go has the video streaming & there’s live stats.
Twitter Updates: @MUWomensSoccer & @xavierwsoc

Marquette is 4-0-0 all time against Xavier. The Musketeers have yet to score a goal against the Golden Eagles since joining the Big East, and things aren’t looking good for that to change this year.

In three league matches so far this season, Xavier has managed one goal. Uno. It came in a 2-1 loss in overtime to Providence. Their other two matches? A 5-0 shelling by DePaul and a relatively somber 2-0 affair against Georgetown where the Hoyas tacked on in the 88th minute. That’s not great, especially when you’re riding a three year scoreless streak against a team.

All things considered with that power outage, it’s pretty impressive that Samantha Dewey is still #6 in the Big East in points this season. Being the one who scored the lone goal in league play so far probably goes a long way towards keeping her there, but she’s still tied for sixth in the league in goals and tied for sixth in assists, too. It’s not like the rest of the team is chumps. Tori Doss has four goals on the year, and Kenadie Carlson has chipped in three goals and three assists.

Xavier’s still doing their doofy “change keepers at halftime” thing. Rachel Piccus has started the last two matches, with Toni Bizzarro coming on in relief. Things were flipped the other way around in the league opener against DePaul, but Bizzarro got yanked after allowing two goals in 60 minutes. Go figure: Somehow allowing three goals in 30 minutes has given Piccus the role as starter now.