Marquette Men’s Soccer Survives The Rain & Butler

On Wednesday night, I sat down in front of my Roku-enhanced television with a nice big bowl of avgolemono and a Milwaukee Brewing Company Snake Oil to watch Marquette men’s soccer. Other duties kept me from planning to attend the match between the Golden Eagles and Butler, but as it turned out, it was pouring rain as the match started, so it wasn’t the worst thing in the world that my plan was to watch via the Big East Digital Network on YouTube.

I watched exactly 15 minutes and 22 seconds of action.

See, what happened was is that Marquette and Butler played a nice solid start to a match. Marquette controlled the early action, outshooting the Bulldogs 3-0 and acquiring three corner kicks along the way. Then, in the 16th minute, Josh Coan fired in MU’s fourth corner of the match, and Patrick Seagrist was ready and waiting on the other end for his second goal of the season. He was standing at the far post as the ball somehow bounced its way all the way through to him, headbutted it in, took a running start to slide on his knees on the soaking wet turf, immediately got stuck, faceplanted, rolled over, celebrated, walked off with his teammates........

and that’s all I saw.

My feed locked up at that point. I exited from the stream, went back in, and watched Seagrist headbutt the goal in again, etc., etc., and it locked up at the exact same spot. Exited the YouTube app, repeated the whole deal, locked up at the exact same spot. Grabbed my phone, opened up YouTube, etc., etc., locked up at the exact same spot.

That’s bad.

I watched The Good Place instead.

After that episode was over, it was exactly at the start of halftime, with Marquette leading 2-1, thanks to a converted penalty kick by the Bulldogs and Josh Hancock’s first career goal. So I watched another Good Place episode.

Opened up YouTube for wherever the second half was at that point, saw a SoFi ad start, was hopeful.... and then the ad locked up before it ended. Did the whole deal with my phone again, same thing. Noticed the live stream comments, which are gone now, but went roughly along the lines of “this sucks,” “still??!?” and my favorite, from what appeared to be a Butler player parent based on the last name, “Guess they need to raise tuition.”

By the way, the archived video? Jumps from Seagrist’s goal at 15:22 to the 32nd minute. NEAT. The rest of the first half is there, and then the halftime ad cycle.... just keeps repeating for 15 minutes and then it ends.

Anyway, the point is that’s when I gave up trying to watch the match.

The good news is that the MU Twitter was able to capture Hancock’s goal, which was kind of similar to Seagrist’s, except this one had a redirection from Lukas Sunesson.

Sunesson himself would get a third goal for the Golden Eagles not that long after halftime. That one didn’t come on a corner kick, but it did feature Josh Coan pushing the ball past the goal on a cross, and it either skipped off the wet turf or off the gloves of keeper Gabriel Gjergji right to Sunesson for the easy finish.

Butler would claw one back in the 67th minute, as Jared Timmer found Brandon Guhl for a one-timer volley past MU keeper Cedrik Stern. It was the German sophomore’s only true miscue on the night, as he finished with seven saves and guessed right on the penalty kick in the 38th minute but just couldn’t leap far enough to make a save.

Marquette ended up accruing three yellow cards after Guhl’s goal as the Golden Eagles allowed just three more Butler shots for the rest of the match to hold on for the 3-2 win. With the win, MU is now 7-6-1 on the season, and 3-3-0 in Big East play. That gives them nine points in the table, and after the rest of Wednesday’s results, Marquette is sitting in a three-way tie for third place in the league. With Georgetown and St. John’s at 16 and 15 points respectively, it seems like everyone else is playing for third place at best now, so it’s always a good thing to be in the best position.

It’s not a full highlight reel, because Seagrist’s goal isn’t in here, but please enjoy these highlights courtesy of the Big East Digital Network:

Up Next: Ah, crap.

The Golden Eagles return to action on Saturday afternoon when they collide with #7 Georgetown, fresh off of their 3-0 mauling of #4 St. John’s in New York on Wednesday night. Good, great, super.