Marquette Men’s Soccer Gets Shutout By Michigan

On Monday night, Marquette men’s soccer gave up three goals in the first 28 minutes of the game on their way to a 3-0 shutout loss against Michigan. The Golden Eagles are now 2-3-0 on the season after starting out the campaign with two straight wins.

Hey, remember when Top Drawer Soccer said that MU was the #12 team in the country? Yeah.

After Marquette’s loss to Saint Louis last week, I defended the play of freshman goalkeeper Cedrik Stern. He had been inserted into the lineup by head coach Louis Bennett because he had earned the playing time in practice. As you may recall, the Billikens scored goals on their third, fourth, and fifth shots of the night and won 3-1. It seemed likely and possible that this wasn’t all Stern’s fault, particularly not in his first ever collegiate game.

I bring all of this up because Stern got the start again in Ann Arbor on Monday. Michigan scored on their third, fourth, and sixth shots of the game. You can make the argument that whatever happened after both Saint Louis and Michigan scored their third goals of the match doesn’t really matter because they had what amounts to a massive lead in soccer. What we know for sure is that Stern has played twice this season and has conceded three goals in the first half hour in both matches. I can’t draw any definitive conclusions here because the SLU match was behind the ESPN+ paywall and I haven’t pulled the trigger on subscribing yet and the Michigan game flat out wasn’t streamed at all because Michigan apparently doesn’t have enough money to stream games from their eight year old soccer facility. Thus, I haven’t seen exactly what happened on these goals.

I am, however, starting to wonder if Cedrik Stern is 100% prepared to be playing at this level right this moment. Stern has allowed six goals, all in the first 30 minutes of the two matches he played. Luis Barraza has allowed two goals total in three matches. Something’s different about the two, but in Stern’s defense, it’s possible that Michigan and Saint Louis are the two toughest teams that Marquette has played this season. Michigan is for sure, as the Wolverines are knocking on the door of the top 25 after picking up this victory.

Up Next: Michigan won’t be the best team that MU has played all season for very long. Marquette returns to action this Saturday night at Valley Field when they begin Big East play by hosting Villanova Wildcats. The Wildcats (4-1-0) are one of the biggest surprise stories of the season so far, vaulting up to #13 in the newest USC poll.