#18 Marquette Men’s Lacrosse Gets Pantsed By Robert Morris

FINE, ALRIGHT. FINE. I’LL RECAP THE STUPID GAME, JUST STOP JABBING ME WITH THE KLINGON PAIN STICKS.

/clears throat
//adjusts necktie that I’m not wearing

Marquette men’s lacrosse needed to have a good performance on Saturday. In their most recent game, they lost in double overtime to Bellarmine just two days after beating a top 10 ranked Ohio State team in overtime. Perhaps the loss could be excused to some degree by fatigue with a game just two days earlier, but that accentuates my point. MU had to have a solid showing at home against a Robert Morris team that was receiving votes in last week’s media top 20 poll.

They didn’t get it.

Marquette gave up the first seven goals of the game, five in the first nine minutes, on their way to a 12-2 loss to the Colonials.

Marquette was outshot 13-5 in the first quarter, and that’s after the Golden Eagles recorded the first two shots of the game. Shot #3 came after MU forced a turnover to take the ball away from RMU after they won the faceoff following the first goal of the game. That came at the 11:48 mark, and MU attempted just two more shots the rest of the quarter. Robert Morris had the advantage in ground balls, 9-4, in the first quarter. Robert Morris beat Marquette 6-2 on face-offs in the first quarter, perhaps at least in part to the fact that MU was without the services of face-off specialist Zachary Melillo in this game.

It is completely reasonable to ask, given the context, if this was the worst quarter of lacrosse in Marquette history.

Things leveled out the rest of the game. Marquette outshot RMU, 25-19. Marquette grabbed more ground balls, 15-11. Goals didn’t come through, though. After Ryan Fazio put Marquette on the board early in the second, the Colonials threw in the next three goals to go up 10-1 and effectively end the game. Maybe that sounds a little over the top, but it took until there was just 2:48 left in the third quarter to get around to scoring that third straight goal. Yep, that’s right, after getting held scoreless in the first 16:30 of the game, Marquette followed that up with a streak of nearly 26 minutes without a goal.

I’m not going to try and convince you that Marquette was supposed to be some kind of offensive powerhouse this season, but I am going to try and convince you that the Golden Eagles showed enough offensive life through the first four games of the season to make you think that they should be able to manage more than two goals against a top 25 team.

Didn’t happen, though.

Up Next: Marquette heads to Michigan for their next game. That one’s scheduled for a 2pm start coming up on Saturday. The Wolverines are 4-2 on the season, with the losses coming on the road against Penn and Yale, both of whom were ranked at the time. Michigan also has a home win over Bellarmine, so at this point, we can say that the Wolverines are capable of doing things that Marquette is not.