Marquette Men’s Lacrosse Takes A Loss Against #9 Ohio State

On Saturday, Marquette men’s lacrosse made their way down to Dallas to the Patriot Cup event on SMU’s campus. The Golden Eagles will be returning home with a 13-9 loss to Ohio State, the #9 team in the country. Marquette is now 2-2 on the season after two consecutive losses.

It took a long while for things to start getting going, but it seems that Marquette’s fate may have been sealed somewhat early. The Golden Eagles got the first goal of the game, and after the first quarter ended tied 1-1, the Buckeyes got three more in the first four minutes of the second frame. 4-1.

From there, MU traded goals back and forth with Ohio State all the way until John Wagner got his only goal of the game with 7:41 left in the fourth. That made it 10-8 favoring OSU, but that’s a lot of time and a fairly close margin. The Buckeyes broke up the dream of an upset pretty quickly, though. Jackson Reid got his fifth of the game 80 seconds later, and another 60 seconds went by before Tre Leclaire got his third. 12-8, Buckeyes. That was a wrap there. Close, but not enough at the end of the day.

I want to go ahead and drop in the postgame comments from Joe Amplo, because there’s a marked departure from his demeanor from a week ago.

The message was sent, as was expected, and Amplo got the performance out of his team that he wanted on this day in Texas. It didn’t come with a win, but hey: It’s a top 10 opponent. Those kinds of games are supposed to be hard to win.

Quite honestly, Marquette should be commended for their performance in general, as they had an awful day on face-offs.

A trio of Golden Eagles knocked in two goals on the day, with Tanner Thomson getting the advantage on the points chart amongst them thanks to an assist. Wagner matched Thomson by adding two assists to get to three points on the day. Ohio State’s Justin Inacio is a hell of a draw man, and he went 18-for-25. Even with the guys in scarlet and gray ending up with the ball after most of the goals in the game, Marquette didn’t let that deter them and ended up getting it back to keep the Buckeyes within reach all game long.

Gabe Stein got the start in net for Marquette here, changing things up from the first three games of the season. John Hulsman ended up getting lifted early against Detroit Mercy last week, and Stein provided something of a calming influence in that regard. Hulsman got the nod in the second half, so perhaps we’ll see more of a time share arrangement going forward.

Up Next: Marquette will be back at home at Valley Fields on Saturday when they face Cleveland State. The third year D1 program is 2-4 on the year after beating Mercer 12-8 on Saturday.