Marquette Women’s Lacrosse Beats Detroit Mercy With A Big Second Half

A fairly reasonable and competitive contest at Valley Fields got busted wide open in the first 10 minutes after halftime on Sunday as Marquette women’s lacrosse ended up with a 22-9 victory over Detroit Mercy. The Golden Eagles are now 2-2 on the season and 2-1 at home.

As mentioned, the first half was a perfectly decent lacrosse game. Marquette took a 5-2 lead late in the frame, and ended up with a 7-4 margin at halftime. On pace for a 14-8 game, that seems totally fine and good. Then the second half started, and it was off to the races for the Golden Eagles. Three goals in the first two minutes, all from three different scorers, had the margin at 10-4 before the Titans were barely even ready to go. After UDM’s Kaitlyn Wandelt broke up the Marquette run, MU ripped off another three goals in less than four minutes’ time, capped by the third goal of the game by Megan Menzuber.

21:10 left, Marquette up 13-5. The Golden Eagles quite nearly matched their entire output from the first half in less than nine minutes coming out of the locker room. That’s nuts!

Of course, the nuttery didn’t end there. Marquette would tack on nine more goals the rest of the way, and quite honestly, if it wasn’t for yellow cards on Menzuber and Cate Soccodato, this game might have been even more lopsided. First, Detroit Mercy scored goals on both of those woman-up situations. Second, Soccodato’s yellow card in the second half was the second of the game for her, thus disqualifying her from further participation. She had five assists in the game but didn’t play in the final 20 minutes while Marquette scored nine goals. What would have been the scoring total if MU’s #4 all-time passer had been eligible to participate??

It’s not always about the offense in these types of games. The defense stepped up in a big way in the second half. After allowing 13 shots on goal in 19 attempts in the first half, that was down to seven on goal in 11 attempts in the second half, and remember: Detroit had two woman-up situations after halftime. Erin Dowdle was a machine for Marquette in this game, recording a game high five ground balls and tying for the game high with Grace Gabriel and Jocelyn Miller with three caused turnovers. In her free time, she also contributed a draw control.

Menzuber finished with five goals on the day to lead the team, and her six points tied with Gabriel (4G, 2A) for the game high there. Hat tricks from Charlotte McGuire and Shea Garcia were a big help for the Golden Eagles as well, and this was the second straight game with a hat trick for Garcia. It’s still early in the season, of course, but back-to-back hat tricks for the freshman from Manhasset, NY, is a pretty big deal both for her and for Marquette in general this season.

How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com?

Up Next: BRING ON THE ROAD TRIP! Marquette’s next seven games are all on the road, which means we’ll have to wait until March 23rd in order to see them at the Valley again. Maybe the snow will be gone by then. Anyway, Marquette has just one game next weekend. They’ll be down in Georgia to square off against Kennesaw State Owls, with first draw on Saturday set for noon Central. The Owls are 0-2 on the year after road losses against Arizona State and Vanderbilt, making the contest against Marquette their home opener.