Marquette Men’s Lacrosse Shells Detroit Mercy

Three times in Marquette men’s lacrosse history, the Golden Eagles have scored 17 goals in a game. Twice in 2017 against St. John’s and Jacksonville, and then last year at Robert Morris.

That is no longer the program record.

On Saturday, Ryan Fazio, Peter Henkhaus, and Chris Kirschner all had hat tricks to lead Marquette to an 18-6 victory over Detroit Mercy. The Golden Eagles are now 3-1 on the season, and I’d have to say that they bounced back quite effectively from suffering their first loss of the year last week.

Look. I’m going to be honest with you. I didn’t watch a single second of this game, although that has more to do with the Titans not figuring out how to stream games from the building that they rent to play indoor games when the weather stinks. However, it also has to do with the fact that I was 1) watching Marquette men’s basketball at a Buffalo Wild Wings, 2) picking up my kid from a birthday party, and 3) driving home while the game was going on.

Here’s what I was aware of from my intermittent checks on tweets from both the Marquette lacrosse account as well as from intrepid Marquette Wire reporter Dan Avington:

• Marquette was playing well right out of the gate
• Marquette appeared to seize control in the second quarter, holding an 8-3 lead at the half.
• Things got very favorable to Marquette in the third quarter, especially late in the period as the Golden Eagles poured it on.
• Once the goal faucet was turned on, there was no stopping it.

All of these seems to track, as Marquette ended up closing the game on a 9-2 run, and the second Detroit goal was in fact the last goal of the game and largely speaking meaningless to the outcome. In fact, the first Detroit goal in there was meaningless as well, as it cut the lead to 13-5, but I bet that head coach Andrew Stimmel wasn’t thrilled about it. That’s the kind of thing that happens when a team gives up a goal with one second left in the quarter.

As much as Marquette was dominating on the scoreboard, it seems that the game was actually back and forth a bit. Marquette never outshot Detroit by more than four in any of the first three quarters, and only an eight shot margin in the final period propelled MU to a 47-30 advantage. The big difference in the game was accuracy. 12 of Detroit’s 30 shots were on frame, while 27 of Marquette’s 47 were aimed between the pipes. That’s the kind of thing that can be a big difference in a game, and you see it in the final score here.

The thing that stands out to me, ultimately, is the team goal record. Up to this point of the season, Marquette has not looked like a particularly dominating offensive team. I’m not expecting everything to happen all at once, but based on the style of play at Yale and Hobart last year, I expected to see some big offensive numbers with Stimmel and offensive coordinator Peet Poillon guiding the ship. That hadn’t happened until Saturday, and thus this is a good sign going forward. Maybe it was just a case of a beneficial matchup for Marquette, but you can’t help but be optimistic about things right now.

Up Next: Next weekend, it’s another road trip, and this time MU will head further afield than Michigan. They’ll be in Philadelphia to face off with Drexel. The Dragons are 0-2 with one goal road losses to High Point and Albany so far this season, and they will host Robert Morris on Tuesday before the Golden Eagles get to town.