Marquette Women’s Lacrosse Loses To Georgetown In Big East Semifinals

On Saturday, Marquette limited Georgetown’s top trio of scorers to just seven goals on 25 shots in a 14-12 win. On Thursday night, those two teams rematched in the Big East semifinals, and it was a different story. Francesca Whitehurst, Taylor Gebhardt, and Morgan Ryan totaled 13 goals on 24 shots and the Hoyas recorded a 17-10 victory over the Golden Eagles to advance to the Big East championship game on Saturday. As a result, Marquette’s 2019 season has come to an end.

A pair of woman-up goals for Georgetown tipped the game in their favor early as Jocelyn Miller took a yellow card while Charlotte McGuire was already sitting on the sidelines for two minutes. That had the game at 3-1 after six minutes of action, and while Grace Gabriel grabbed one back less than two minutes later, the gates seemed to be open for Georgetown. Gebhardt got her third goal of the game with 19:46 left in the first half to kick off a 3-0 run that would turn into a 6-1 run. All six of those goals came from either Gebhardt, Whitehurst, or Ryan, and with 9:26 left in the first half, Marquette was in a 9-3 hole. The Golden Eagles never trailed by more than four on Saturday, so things were trending downwards quickly.

Georgetown would add three more goals after Lindsey Willcocks broke up the run, and it was 12-4 at the half. Two early second half goals from Willcocks and McGuire brought Marquette within six with just over 26 minutes left, but MU would go 10 minutes without a goal while Georgetown netted two more. One came from Whitehurst and one came from Ryan, which you had to expect if you read the opening paragraph carefully enough. Marquette couldn’t get any close than six the rest of the way, and that was that down at Valley Fields.

Gabriel threw in three goals to bring her program record for career points to 199. Willcocks finished with a team high four points while putting an assist with her three goals on the day. McGuire rounded out the trio of seniors with hat tricks for the Golden Eagles in their final collegiate game.

As mentioned at the top, the season is over now, which means that we have to issue a big Anonymous Eagle THANK YOU to Marquette’s senior class: Holly Andersen, Logan Dobratz, Laine Dolan, Grace Gabriel, Charlotte McGuire, Cate Soccodato, Abigail Squirrell, Kaitlyn Viviano, and Lindsey Willcocks. That group of nine women have been a major part of the growth of Marquette women’s lacrosse, agreeing to come play for Meredith Black when the program was still getting off the ground to a certain extent. Along the way, they’ve helped grow the program into its first two Big East tournament appearances and the program’s first ever win over a ranked opponent. They’ve all played a role in that growth in one way or another, and some of these seniors have etched their names into the MU history books as some of the greatest players the team has ever seen. We’re thankful for everything that they’ve all given to the team and to the university in their time in Milwaukee, and we wish them nothing but the best in whatever comes next for them.