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Stupid Notre Dame.
The #7 team in the country to start the 2020 season demolished Marquette women’s lacrosse on Sunday afternoon, scoring the first seven goals of the game on their way to handing the Golden Eagles an 18-3 loss in South Bend. MU kicks off Year #8 of Division 1 lacrosse in Milwaukee at 0-1 and a sobering reminder that they’re not quite on the nationally relevant level yet.
Honestly, Marquette’s problem wasn’t completely that Notre Dame is really good at this, it’s that Marquette couldn’t get out of their own way. By the time that sophomore Shea Garcia potted a free position attempt with 12:13 left to go in the first half to give MU their first goal of the game and make it a 7-1 ball game, the Golden Eagles had committed eight turnovers. Five of them were credited as caused by ND, so yeah, the Irish had their hand in the matter. The point here is that Garcia’s goal was Marquette’s eighth shot of the game, and, uh, well, matching your turnovers shot for shot through 18 minutes is no way to go through life.
It was 11-2 at the half, thanks to a last second goal by ND’s Samantha Lynch. Garcia scored with 23:29 to go to make it a 12-3 ballgame, but let’s be honest: things were really over at that point. Notre Dame scoring six more times as the game progress was more just seeing how many goals they could score in the game than it was making sure that they were winning the game. Of course, since the last two came off of Marquette penalties, you can’t really fault Notre Dame for chucking it in the net.
Garcia finished with two goals to lead Marquette in that department, while Caroline Steller added a goal and assist to match Garcia in points with two. Julianna Horning made six saves in the game before being lifted for Sophia Leva for the final 16 minutes of action.
Burn the tape and pretend it never happened, I say.
Up Next: Marquette’s first chance to put this behind them comes on Friday afternoon when they host Cincinnati. The Bearcats are coming off of a 16-11 home loss in their opener on Sunday afternoon to Louisville. Coincidentally, UL is the next team MU faces after Cincinnati, so that pair of contests will provide Marquette with a nice measuring stick after three games.