Marquette Men’s Lacrosse Couldn’t Hold A Lead In Their Overtime Loss To Villanova

Marquette Golden Eagles men’s lacrosse had no answer for Christian Cuccinello on Saturday, as the Villanova Wildcats junior scored five goals including the overtime game winner as the Golden Eagles lost to the Wildcats, 10-9. Marquette drops to 5-3 on the season and 1-1 in Big East action, while Villanova has now won five straight to move to 6-4 on the season and 1-0 in conference play.

Marquette drops to 15-5 in one goal games in program history. Remember in the preview when I talked about how this kind of coin flip result is going to turn against the Golden Eagles eventually? It’s not a long term trend quite yet, but there was a loss on the horizon for MU, and it caught them on Saturday afternoon.

I struggle to correctly identify the words to use to talk about Marquette’s offense in this game. On one hand, MU jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first five minutes, including face off specialist Zachary Melillo banging home his second goal of the season just six seconds after a marker from from Joe Dunn. Later, John Wagner put Marquette back up by three when he opened the scoring in the third quarter to make it a 6-3 game. Let’s be clear: You can’t get to overtime tied at nine goals each if you don’t score nine goals, and MU did a good job putting the ball past VU goalie Nick Testa in the first 42 minutes of the game.

And then, after Ryan McNamara scored his lone goal of the game with 2:28 left in the third quarter to put MU up 9-7, Marquette didn’t score again. The last 2:28 of the third, all 15 minutes of the fourth, and the first 2:30 of overtime, no goals for the Golden Eagles, even with the first possession of the extra session. The defense only gave up three goals on 13 shots over that stretch to give the offense a chance to preserve the win, but none of MU’s seven shots struck gold. Marquette came very close in the fading seconds of regulation, as Wagner hit the post with with under a minute to play and McNamara had a shot stopped by Testa. MU’s first possession of overtime ended on a turnover and Cuccinello scored two minutes later.

Up Next: Marquette will be back in the Valley for one of their two home games in Big East play next week Saturday. St. John’s (1-8, 0-1 Big East) will be coming to town following their 15-6 loss to Providence in their league opener, as well as a mid-week home date against Yale.