Marquette Women’s Soccer Gets Whomped By Providence

A late goal from Maggie Starker and three second half saves from Mikki Easter are what qualifies as highlights from Marquette women’s soccer’s 3-1 loss to Providence on Sunday. The Golden Eagles are now 7-6-0 and 3-3-0 in Big East play after dropping both ends of their trip to New England this week. The points stagnation for Marquette over the last two matches has caused them to drop away from the top part of the Big East table and into a tie with DePaul for fifth place in the league at the moment with nine points.

Things started out poorly for Marquette and got worse from there. The first shot of the match for either team came in the 12th minute (not good) and it came off the foot of PC’s Meg Hughes and went into the net for a 1-0 lead for the home team (bad). Marquette would not generate a shot of their own until the 37th minute (no good) and that would be their only shot of the entire half (also no good) as the Friars outshot MU 7-1 in the first 45 minutes (blerg).

Onwards to the second half, where the first three shots of the period went for the Friars and this is what their fourth shot looked like in the 53rd minute:

I get that most goals qualify as defensive miscues one way or another, but that’s two-for-two in the “yeah, that didn’t look great for MU” department.

Marquette had actually registered a shot in the half before Hannah McNulty put that one in, but shot #2 for Marquette in the half and #3 for the game did not come until past the hour mark. So, yeah.

Then PC’s Ava Brandt did this in the 77th minute:

That also does not look great for Marquette, but that’s what happens when you’re trailing 2-0 in the 77th minute sometimes: You end up pushing really far forward in an effort to punch a goal in and sometimes you give up a breakaway down the wing.

Marquette’s seventh shot of the game came in the 87th minute, and it is this Maggie Starker deflection of a ball played by Maddie Monticello that broke up the clean sheet by PC’s Emma Bodner.

I think that qualifies as the most luck that Marquette had all afternoon, as there was a real possibility that Starker’s attempt at an alteration of direction could have gone very very poorly as well.

Moving on.

Up Next: The Golden Eagles have four matches remaining to secure enough points to lock up a top six spot in the Big East and thus a berth in the conference tournament. Next on the list? A home date with St. John’s on Thursday night at Valley Fields. The Johnnies are currently 2-2-1 in conference play after losing to Georgetown on Sunday, and they’ll arrive in Milwaukee on a three match winless streak and a two match scoreless streak.