Marquette Women’s Lacrosse Falls Short In Comeback Against #18 Notre Dame

GOOD NEWS: Marquette Golden Eagles women’s lacrosse outscored #18 Notre Dame Fighting Irish 7-5 in the second half on Wednesday evening.

BAD NEWS: Notre Dame was up 10-3 at halftime, which meant that the Golden Eagles left South Bend with a loss, final score: 15-10.

Marquette drops to 3-3 on the season and continues their streak of having never defeated a nationally ranked team.

It was a pretty ugly first half for the Golden Eagles. In addition to that 10-3 margin in goals, which was powered by four from ND’s Andie Aldave, Marquette got outshot, 21-11, outhustled to ground balls, 13-10, out drawn, 8-6, and, perhaps most importantly, outdone on free position shots. Notre Dame turned nine first half FPS opportunities into five goals, while MU merely converted the only chance that they had. It’s hard to win a lacrosse game when your opponent is taking that many more free swings at the net relative to how many you’re getting.

Marquette did make the game interesting after halftime. Allison Lane broke the ice on the scoring, and then back-to-back goals from Cate Soccodato and Lane moved the score to 11-6. After a free position goal from ND’s Molly Cobb — one of just two in the half for the Irish — Riley Hill and Grace Gabriel scored the next two goals of the game, getting them just 38 seconds apart. That made it a 12-8 game with 10:06 to play. Six minutes later, Gabriel and Soccodato scored 21 seconds apart to make it a 13-10 ball game.

Sadly, it was too little too late at that point. Soccodato’s second of the game came with 4:05 remaining, and maybe that was enough time to make some magic happen. However, Logan Dobratz took a yellow card for the Golden Eagles with 3:34 remaining, and Aldave’s fifth goal of the game came on the 1-up advantage, making it a four goal game with 2:36 to go. That, as they say, was that.

Lane finished with a hat trick to lead Marquette in goals, and three different Golden Eagles combined to dish out MU’s three assists. Julianna Horning played the full 60 minutes in net for MU, making 10 saves, five in each half, to do her damnedest to keep the Golden Eagles in the game.

Up Next: Marquette returns home for their next contest. They’ll host Niagara on Saturday, with first draw scheduled for noon Central time. The Purple Eagles are 3-0 on the season, with wins over Binghamton, St. Bonaventure, and Duquesne.