Marquette Men’s Soccer Preview: at #7 Georgetown

And things were going so well.

Okay, look. It’s a good thing that Marquette Golden Eagles men’s soccer has won their last two matches to pull themselves into a three-way tie for third place in the Big East. Why? Because thing ain’t looking good in terms of getting points out of Saturday’s match.

We’ll get to the details in a moment, but the key here is this: No matter what happens on Saturday across the Big East, Marquette can’t fall lower than a tie for fifth place in the conference. At least I think so. I didn’t do all of the math. Here’s what I know: the two teams tied with MU in third are playing each other, and two of the three teams tied for seventh place, exactly three points behind Marquette, are playing each other as well. That’s good news relative to the Golden Eagles’ place in the table.

It’s important to think about all the good news that you can, because, uh, well, I’m not feeling so hot about Marquette’s chances in Saturday’s road game.....

Big East Match #7: at #7 Georgetown Hoyas (12-1-1, 5-0-1 Big East)

Date: Saturday, October 26, 2019
Time: Noon Central
Location: Shaw Field, next to the hospital helicopter pad
Streaming: Big East Digital Network on the Big East’s YouTube channel
Live Stats: StatBroadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteSoccer

Marquette is 1-13-3 all time against Georgetown, and they are currently riding a 12 match winless streak. The Golden Eagles are 0-2-2 in the last four, which counts as a hot streak in this rivalry. Marquette finagled a 0-0 draw with only 10 men for the final 38 minutes in last year’s regular season meeting before losing 2-0 in the Big East tournament championship match.

The Hoyas come into this one on a five match winning streak, a run of six straight matches where they have not allowed a goal, and finally, a seven match unbeaten streak. That seems pretty good! That’s how you end up as the #7 team in the country, I guess. They’re unbeaten and untied at Shaw Field, which is where this match will be taking place.

Relative to that run of six straight matches without allowing a goal, it will be an accomplishment if the Golden Eagles put the ball in the net. The Hoyas have allowed five — count ‘em, FIVE — goals all season. To put that in context, Marquette has scored five goals against Georgetown in the last 10 matches combined, which is every match since 2012.

Eeeesh. To make things worse, Georgetown has been alternating goalies between Giannis Nikopolidis and Tomas Romero all season, so while it appears to be Nikopolidis’ turn on Saturday, it doesn’t really matter which one of them is back there. The Hoyas don’t even allow eight shots per game on average, so whichever guy is standing right in front of the net is the least of MU’s problems.

On the other end of the field, Derek Dodson and Jacob Montes are the two guys to watch. Dodson leads the team in points this season, putting up 16 without leading the team in goals or assists, which is pretty impressive. Montes is the goals leader with seven, including one in each of GU’s last two contests. Paul Rothrock, which sounds like a terrible Flintstones character name, is the best passer on the team with seven assists. The Hoyas have 29 assists on 30 goals this season, so it’s going to take a full team effort to keep Georgetown off the scoreboard.