Marquette Women’s Lacrosse Smashes Villanova

Five different Golden Eagles recorded hat tricks on Saturday as Marquette women’s lacrosse thrashed Villanova, 20-6. That is a new record for goals in a game for Marquette in Big East play, while it ties the overall program record set earlier this season against Kennesaw State.

Marquette is now 2-1 in Big East play and 4-7 overall, while the Wildcats fall to 3-7 overall and 1-2 in league action. For the moment, at least, 2-1 is good enough to have Marquette in a four-way tie for second place in the conference.

The big goal scorer of the day was Charlotte McGuire, who netted a career best four goals, including the first two of the game to get the Golden Eagles started on a 9-0 run to open the game. Allison Lane, making her return to the starting lineup in this game, was the first MU player to record a hat trick, scoring Marquette’s third, eighth, and ninth goals of that start. By the time the halftime horn sounded with Marquette leading 11-2, seven different Golden Eagles had hit the back of the net.

McGuire wrapped up her hat trick with the first goal of the second half, and by giving Marquette a 10 goal lead, she began the acceleration of the game via the running clock. Villanova would trim into the lead a bit, scoring three in a row at one point to cut the lead to 13-5, but Marquette answered with two of their own, including Amanda Bochniak’s third of the game, to restart the clock. VU would score for the final time with 16:53 remaining, and after the Golden Eagles answered with Julianna Shearer’s third goal of the game, the clock kept running for the remainder of the contest.

That didn’t stop Grace Gabriel from recording a hat trick with all of her goals coming with less than 13 minutes to play, including getting two of them just barely more than a minute apart..... while the clock was running in between her first and the ensuing draw control.

While we can go on and on and on about the offensive stars in the game — Bochniak had six points! — we have to talk about the outstanding performance in net from MU freshman Jules Horning. She made four saves while Marquette was building that 9-0 lead to take all the air out of Villanova’s day on her way to finishing with seven saves before giving way to Molly Grozier with a shade under four minutes to play.

You know what the crazy part about this game was? Marquette outshot Villanova only by a margin of 29-22. A mere nine of Marquette’s shots did not go in, and two of those were saved by VU goalie Julia Michaels.

Last, but very certainly not least, when Julianna Shearer scored her second goal of the game with 27:48 left in the game to put Marquette up 13-2, she became the fourth player in Marquette women’s lacrosse history to record 100 career points. She joins teammates Amanda Bochniak and Claire Costanza, along with former teammate Hayley Baas. With 32 goals on the season, she’s just six away from tying her own program record for goals in a season.

How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com?

Up Next: Well, it’s back into the fire for Marquette. They’ll be at home for their next game, but they’ll be hosting #3 ranked Florida on Wednesday afternoon at noon Central. The Gators are 9-2 on the season and alone in first place in the Big East. Their only losses this season are to teams ranked #1 in the country at the time.