Marquette Women’s Lacrosse Falls In Overtime To Temple

Marquette rallied from down six in the first half to briefly take a lead late before falling 17-16 in overtime to Temple on Saturday afternoon. The Golden Eagles drop to 3-7 on the season and 1-1 in Big East play, while the Owls are now 8-2 overall and 1-1 in league action.

This game was all over the place. Temple scored the first two goals of the game before Marquette snapped off the next five, including Julianna Shearer scoring twice to tie and then break Hayley Baas’ program record for career goals. Temple’s response to falling behind 5-2 after slightly longer than 10 minutes? Scoring 10 of the next 11 goals of the game, including the next seven straight to take a 9-5 and then a 12-6 lead. As if that didn’t make the game crazy enough, Shearer took two yellow cards 40 seconds apart with TU getting goal #11 off the first one, Shearer getting the second card on the ensuing faceoff and thus disqualifying her for the remaining 36 minutes of the game, and then the Owls scoring goal #12 just 16 seconds after that.

To review: 10-1 Owls run capped off by two goals 27 seconds apart that were the result of MU’s all time leading goal scorer getting sent off. If Marquette had completely fallen apart at this point, no one would have been terribly surprised, to be honest.

Marquette got two goals before halftime to take some of the edge off, and after Temple scored to start off the second half, the Golden Eagles scored the next four goals. Sometimes it takes goals from unexpected places to jumpstart a team, and with Logan Dobratz and Taylor Smith both scoring their second goals of the season in that burst that pulled Marquette within one at 13-12, you can see how that might have fired up the rest of the team. Temple got one back before Amanda Bochniak scored twice and Lindsey Willcocks dropped in her third goal of the season to put Marquette up 15-14 with 9:31 to play.

Again, this was a 12-6 game with 6:19 left in the first half, and in about 21 minutes of action, the Golden Eagles went from spiraling out of control and losing their best scorer to leading by one. All. Over. The. Place. Marquette head coach Meredith Black switched goalies TWICE in this game, pulling Jules Horning with 12:31 left in the first half for Molly Grozier before going back to Horning for all of the second half and overtime. What even is this game?

Nicole Barretta took feeds from two different teammates just 28 seconds apart to flip the game back in favor of Temple, 16-15, with 6:47 to play. Not great for Marquette, but hey, what’s one more rally? Grace Gabriel bounced back from a momentarily scary moment where she went down holding her knee in the first half to score her third goal of the second half and sixth of the game with 2:44 to play to knot things at 16, and after Horning made a free position shot save with two minutes left and Alex Gambacorta shut down a last second attack from Temple, things needed extra time to be decided.

Marquette had their chances in OT, with Gabriel and Claire Costanza putting shots on goal less than 30 seconds apart, but Temple’s Kelsea Hershey made stops on both. The second one got scooped up by the Owls and that gave Brenda McDermott a chance to fire home her third goal of the game to give Temple the thrilling victory.

Nine different Golden Eagles scored, led by the six goals from Gabriel which tied Shearer for the most goals in a single game in program history. Bochniak tacked on two assists to give her a four point day. Temple was led by five goals from Barretta, who had an assist to match Gabriel and McDermott (3G, 3A) for the game high in points with six.

One small note of importance to Marquette fans: Allison Lane made her return to the field for Marquette on Saturday after suffering a knee injury against Northwestern and missing the last two games. The junior midfielder came off the bench for the Golden Eagles to record a draw control and a caused turnover. She didn’t get a shot off in the game, but she was on the field in overtime as the Golden Eagles were trying to pull off the comeback.

Up Next: FINALLY, MARQUETTE WOMEN’S LACROSSE RETURNS TO THE VALLEY. The game against Temple was the final game of MU’s seven game road trip, which they finished with a record of 3-4. Villanova comes to Milwaukee for a Big East clash on Saturday, April 1, and no, that’s not an April Fool’s joke. The Wildcats are 2-6 on the season and 0-1 in league play, although they’ll host Cincinnati on Sunday afternoon.