Marquette Gets Shutout By Georgetown In Big East Women’s Soccer Championship Game

Marquette found themselves unable to sustain offense on Sunday afternoon as #7 Georgetown pulled the “upset” in the Big East tournament, beating the top seeded Golden Eagles, 2-0.

Because of a few draws during the regular season and a late season loss to DePaul, the Hoyas found themselves with the #3 seed in the conference tournament even though they’re rightfully one of the best teams in the country. The Hoyas took advantage of being able to play all three tournament matches at home due to Shaw Field being the predetermined host site for the tournament and carried the day against the Golden Eagles with relative ease to earn the Big East’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Even with Marquette finding goals all year from all sides of the pitch - at the end of the regular season, the league’s Defensive Player of the Year was leading MU in goals - that kind of diversity didn’t matter against Georgetown on Sunday afternoon. The Hoyas suffocated the Marquette offense all match long, allowing just one shot against 16 for the home squad.

Marquette keeper Maddy Henry made seven saves on the afternoon to keep the Golden Eagles in the match, but there wasn’t much she could do about either goal that the Hoyas scored. First, it was Grace Damaska launching from more than 20 yards away to go above the leaping outstretched arm of Henry to catch just enough crossbar to deflect into the net for what would turn out to be the game winning goal in the 22nd minute.

Georgetown got their insurance policy in the 52nd minute. Chloe Knott hit the post with a shot, getting it through a diving Henry both on the shot and the rebound. The carom went right out in front of the net for Rachel Corboz to make the easy tap in for her 10th goal of the season. Yet again, Henry made the right play, but there was nothing she could do about physics giving Corboz the easy goal.

Henry was joined on the all-tournament team by Carrie Madden, who scored both goals for the Golden Eagles in the semifinals, and Morgan Proffitt. Quite surprising to see Proffitt on the list after the announcers during Friday’s semifinal match remarked about how much St. John’s was neutralizing the impact of the Big East’s Defensive Player of the Year. By the way, I was being sarcastic.

Up Next: Marquette waits to hear their name called during Monday afternoon’s NCAA tournament selection show. The Golden Eagles have a record of 12-7-2 on the season after going 1-1 in the Big East tournament, which, maybe, doesn’t sound like the best possible record to have for a postseason berth. However, given that it’s a 64 team tournament and MU had a top 30 RPI before playing a neutral site match against #73 St. John’s and a road match against #10 Georgetown, I think Marquette will make the field easily.

The selection show will be streamed on NCAA.com starting at 3:30pm Central. The Golden Eagles will be hosting a viewing party at the Union Sports Annex on campus, which will be open to the public.