Marquette Women’s Soccer Preview: vs Xavier Musketeers

The Marquette Golden Eagles will host the Xavier Musketeers on Senior Night. Yes, they began this year’s campaign 7-1 but have since dropped four of the last seven games. Not exactly what the Golden Eagles had in mind after having a share of the Big East regular season title last year. That’s essentially out the window, but they still have a chance to make a run in the Big East tournament and a run to the NCAA tournament as well. The good news is that they’ve had a full week to prepare for Xavier after losing to Providence for the first time ever. Ideally, they were able to go into reflection mode and critically analyze their poor mid-season form.

Big East Match #6: vs Xavier Musketeers (7-4-4, 3-0-2 Big East)

Date: Saturday, October 14, 2017
Time: 5pm Central, AND YES, this is a late change due to thunderstorms being predicted for Saturday night in Milwaukee.
Location: Valley Fields
Streaming: The Big East Digital Network on Fox Sports Go
Live Stats: GameTracker
Special Promotions: Socktoberfest people! First 185 students will receive free MU socks! Plus: Food trucks to celebrate National American Cheese Month, and the first 100 students get a food voucher for the trucks!
Twitter Updates: @MUWomensSoccer

The Xavier Musketeers have drawn against Butler and DePaul after starting Big East play with three straight victories. They are tied for second in the Big East with Butler at 11 points. Any wins stand out? Not really. They had a poor non-conference performance losing games to teams like Duquesne and Eastern Kentucky. But they have rebounded well in conference play beating Creighton, Providence, and Villanova 2-1, 1-0, and 1-0 respectively. The Golden Eagles have lost to both Providence and Villanova in disappointing fashion. The Musketeers have cooled off a bit though with back-to-back draws.

Sadly, the Musketeers haven’t updated their website (come on now, it’s been a full week) but I do know that Sydney Schembri is the leading scorer with 5 goals this year. I looked at the Big East conference website and figured out that Tori Doss scored the only goal in a 1-1 draw against DePaul. For whatever reason, the DePaul game is yet to be listed on Xavier’s website. In contrast to their laziness on their site, their players are anything but lazy as Xavier has multiple goal-scoring threats. We already mentioned Schembri and Doss but Samantha Dewey and Emma Westwater also could be an issue as they’ve scored three and four goals this year. It might be a difficult task, but the Golden Eagles should definitely focus their efforts on shutting down those four players. They have accounted for 15 of Xavier’s 17 goals this season. Odds are if Marquette isn’t careful one of those four will find the back of the net.

The Golden Eagles come into this game with some confidence knowing that they’ve reeled off five straight wins against the Musketeers. In last year’s contest in Highland Heights, Kentucky, Leah Celarek scored the lone goal to give Marquette the 1-0 win. Unfortunately, it’s hard to factor in history in this game when MU has lost to both Villanova and Providence for the first time ever this season. Hopefully, the week off has given the Golden Eagles enough time to re-boot as they’re going to have to come out firing against the Musketeers. It’s a tight race for that last spot into the Big East tournament. MU is currently in a tie for fifth place with Villanova at six points. DePaul is close on their heels with five points. We aren’t quite in the position to start labeling these games as must-wins but MU desperately needs to get a good result here to safely stay in the top six.

Any added incentive to get a win tonight? Yep, Marquette will be honoring Darian Powell, Eli Beard, Madison Dunker, Caroline Fink, and Kirsten Timmer as part of senior night. Timmer is the only one that hasn’t been a consistent starter on the team so we’ll see if head coach Markus Roeders decides to give her some minutes in this one, although a collision suffered against Villanova may keep her out.