Marquette Men’s Soccer Loses To Butler In Double Overtime

Well, pretty much nothing went right for Marquette men’s soccer on Wednesday night in Indianapolis. The Golden Eagles were forced to chase the Butler Bulldogs from the early going, lost a man to a red card in the 69th minute (not nice), and ended up taking a loss. It wasn’t all bad as 10 man MU ended up equalizing and forcing overtime, but a 2-1 loss in double overtime to Butler is still a loss to Butler. Marquette is now 6-7-1 overall and 3-4-1 in Big East play.

With two matches left to play, the Golden Eagles are in a tie for the sixth and final spot in the conference tournament after getting skipped by Butler last night. MU didn’t move at all thanks to the loss, so they stayed on 10 points. Butler took the three points for the win and thus jumped from nine (behind MU) to 12 and into a tie for third place in the league. Could have been Marquette alone in third place if they had won, but alas, they did not.

Wilmer Cabrera, Jr., scored in the sixth minute for Butler, and you can watch the goal for yourself. The play isn’t what’s important, it’s the new world record for “worst announcer’s jinx ever” as Cabrera puts his strike on the ball right as the announcer says “Marquette head coach Louis Bennett feels like his team has turned a corner.” Ugggggggggggh.

That left Marquette chasing Butler for the rest of the first half, and the two sides ended up relatively close otherwise. 6-5 on shots favoring MU, and just one yellow card issued even though the Golden Eagles were whistled for 12 fouls and BU racked up four of their own.

Then the second half started and things just went haywire on Marquette. Sure, the shots are 7-7 at the end of 45 minutes, but there would be 10 cards issued in the second half. One of them was a straight red in the 69th minute to MU’s Alan Salmeron, leaving the Golden Eagles down a man for the remainder and issuing a suspension to Salmeron for MU’s next match as well. One of those 10 cards was issued to the Marquette bench as well in timing with A.J. Franklin’s game tying goal in the 83rd minute. Not really sure what happened, but it’s in the ol’ log book as unassigned to a player so that seems like it has gone to the bench, perhaps directly to head coach Louis Bennett.

Let’s see Franklin’s goal, shall we?

That’s just some nice soccer work by the Golden Eagles, particularly down a man particularly late in the match.

That tied the thing at one each, and that held through to the horn to force overtime. Shots in the first 10 minutes of extra time favored Butler 3-2, but Marquette had the only shot on goal. Again from Franklin, but this time from a corner kick, and this time deflected up and out by Butler keeper Gabriel Gjergji.

With no one on the board in that 10 minutes, things proceeded to a second overtime period, but Butler only needed 88 seconds to end it now:

That’s a nice hockey-type goal for Butler’s Quint Breitkreuz, making use of the screen on MU’s Chandler Hallwood to easily knock it into the net before Hallwood even really saw the ball.

That’s your ballgame, 2-1.

Fiddlesticks.

Up Next: Marquette has their final regular season road game coming up on Saturday. They’ll be in New York to face St. John’s with the first kick scheduled for 4pm Central time. The Red Storm are currently 3-2-2 in Big East play and just one point ahead of Marquette in the standings with 11 points. It’ll be a big contest for both sides as they’ll be jostling for a spot in the conference tournament.