Marquette Women’s Lacrosse Takes An Ugly Loss To California

One game removed from setting a program record with six goals, Julianna Shearer scored another five times on Thursday, but it wasn’t enough as Marquette Golden Eagles lost to California Golden Bears, 18-11. The Golden Eagles are now just 2-6 on the season and now have a loss that wasn’t against a ranked opponent. Perhaps worse, Cal moves to 2-7 on the season with the win, with their only other victory this season coming against first year program Butler.

Things started off on a lousy note for Marquette, as Cal went on a streak of five unanswered goals early to jump out to a 6-1 lead. They started trading goals with the Bears before scoring the final two markers of the first half and the first two of the second half to cut the Cal lead to 8-7 with 25 minutes to play.

Now we’ve got ourselves a game, eh?

Nope. Cal scored the next four goals of the game, and they did it before five more minutes wound off the clock. The Golden Eagles dug in and tracked down the next three goals of the match, including Shearer’s final two of the game. That made it 12-10 with 14:40 left, and after Kate Mattimore and Riley Hill tacked on one more each for both teams, it was 13-11 with 11 minutes to play.

That’s enough time to turn this into something positive, but unfortunately, the Golden Eagles only took six more shots for the rest of the game, and that includes Grace Gabriel’s free position shot as time expired. In the meantime, the Golden Bears posted a 5-0 run, powered by two goals from Caroline Corzel to get us to our final score.

Head coach Meredith Black’s patience with Molly Grozier in net ran out after 19:17 of play, with the junior giving up eight goals and making just one save on 15 California shots. It’s kind of a bummer that Grozier didn’t have it on this particular day, as she hails from Pleasanton, CA, less than 40 miles southeast of the Berkeley campus. Freshman Jules Horning played the remaining 40 minutes and change, giving up 10 goals on 23 shots and making five saves.

The ground ball battle was fairly even in the game, with Cal taking an 18-16 advantage, and the Bears actually had more turnovers, coughing it up 17 times against just 13 for the Golden Eagles. Fouls were a problem for MU, though, as they were whistled for 36 infractions in the game and allowed UC to shoot from the free position 12 times.

As mentioned, Shearer led the team with her five goals, while Grace Gabriel and Riley Hill both tacked on two goals. Jena Fritts fired in five goals for Cal, and she tacked on an assist to give her the game high in points with six. Kate Mattimore posted a hat trick for the Bears and four more Cal players had multi-goal days. Jenny Wilkens went the full 60 in net for Cal and made 12 saves to pick up the win.

We do have a historical note to point out. With her assist on Charlotte McGuire’s goal at the 20:04 mark of the second half, Amanda Bochniak moved to 16 points on the season. More importantly, that gave her 100 career points, making her the third Golden Eagle ever to hit the century mark.

Allison Lane did not play for Marquette after missing the second half against Northwestern due to an injury. It’s unclear at this point how much time that she’s going to miss.

Up Next: Marquette has two more games left on their seven game road trip, but both of the final two games will be Big East contests. The Golden Eagles open up league play on Sunday morning when they visit Cincinnati. The Bearcats are 2-4 on the season, and they’ll host Gardner-Webb for their home opener on Friday evening before Marquette comes to town.