Marquette Men’s Soccer Falls In Strong Showing vs #14 Georgetown

Diego Nunez proved some much needed fireworks for Marquette men’s soccer on Saturday afternoon, but it wasn’t enough as MU fell 2-1 to #14 ranked Georgetown. The Golden Eagles are now 1-2-0 in Big East play and 1-7-1 overall.

It took Marquette 32 seconds to level the match at one goal apiece in the first half. Georgetown’s Ethan Lockner opened the scoring in the match at the 8:31 mark with the easiest goal he’ll ever score in his life. MU keeper Noah Heim, making his first ever collegiate appearance, made a wonderful save on a point blank shot by Jacob Montes. However, he just deflected the shot and the ball landed at Lockner’s feet for the easy tap in goal.

On the ensuing restart, Georgetown gained possession of the ball and began cycling it through their back line in their defensive third. Nunez made a perfectly timed move, came up with the ball and rifled it into the net to knot the action at one each.

It was, honestly, totally bananas.

Georgetown threw in what would turn into the game winner in the 16th minute as the Marquette defense failed Heim. Montes was the creator again, getting Declan McCabe free behind the MU back line, so all McCabe had to do was wait for his opening to shoot it past a charging Heim.

Ok, look. That was the end of the scoring in the match, and yes, Georgetown ended up with a 17-8 shooting margin at the end of 90 minutes. But this game was reaaaaaallly close to a 2-2 tie on numerous occasions. It started to feel that Marquette was building to a second goal after halftime, and especially so late in the game. Luka Prpa sailed a 25 yard free kick ever so slightly high and over the crossbar. Georgetown maybe got away with a little bit of roughhousing because both a Golden Eagle and a Hoya were in the air jousting for the ball twice in one clearance attempt by GU. And then there was perhaps MU’s biggest chance, when GU’s Peter Schropp timed a slide tackle perfectly to help save JT Marcinkowski’s bacon and boot the ball off the goal line. One split-second earlier or later and Schropp boots the thing into the net for an own goal, but no, instead, he protects the lead late.

Marquette went with an interesting 11 to start this match. You had your usual suspects: Prpa, Brendan Skinner, and Patrick Seagrist all made their ninth starts in as many matches this season, while Connor Alba and Grant Owens made their eighth starts of the year. Things got wacky from there, as freshman midfielder Christian Albelo started on defense and, perhaps more importantly, redshirt freshman Noah Heim made his first career appearance with the start in net. Albelo’s time on the pitch didn’t go as well as Heim’s, as he played just 22 minutes before giving way to Jack Alberts for the remainder of the match. Heim acquitted himself very well, considering his first collegiate appearance came against a top 15 foe. He made six saves, three in each half, to keep Marquette in the match, and neither of Georgetown’s goals can be described as miscues by him. Would it have been nice if he could have snared Montes’ shot to prevent the rebound goal? Sure, but it was also a point blank shot, so whatcha gonna do, y’know?

I’d like to provide you with a highlight package here, but Georgetown hasn’t posted a video on YouTube in three months and the Big East doesn’t put BEDN highlight packages on their feed. Oh well.

Up Next: Marquette will be on the road again for their next match, but it’ll be a little closer to home. They’ll visit Wisconsin (5-2-2) on Wednesday night to finally wrap up non-conference play with six Big East matches left to go after that.