Marquette Men’s Lacrosse Notre Dame Recap/St. John’s Preview Combo

Yes, there was a Marquette men’s lacrosse game on Wednesday. No, you haven’t seen a recap of it yet. Such is the timing of life.

However, I also don’t have any idea what to write about it.

The Golden Eagles suffered their fifth loss of the season, dropping to 0-5 on the year, with a 10-3 loss on the road to #8 Notre Dame. If you think “10-3, wow, that sounds awful,” well, you don’t even know the half of it. Through 30 minutes, this one was headed towards a total disaster for Marquette, as Holden Patterson’s man-up goal for the Golden Eagles with 1:43 left in the second quarter was the decisive blow in making it a 9-2 game at halftime.

No, you read that right. It was 9-2 at the half. Notre Dame won 10-3.

Griffin Westlin scored for the Irish with 13:19 left in the third, and that was followed by a Devon Cowan goal for Marquette with 5:23 left in the same quarter, and that was it for scoring on the day. No one scored at all for the final 20 minutes and 23 seconds.

Notre Dame kiiiiiind of went into a shell down the stretch. After outshooting Marquette 43-27 in the first three quarters, it was 11-5 favoring MU in the final 15 minutes. So that explains why the Irish didn’t score again. Marquette just got caught between some missed shots — only four shots on goal out of those 11 — and some quality netminding by Notre Dame’s Liam Entenmann, who made 18 saves in the game to put the lid on the Golden Eagles.

So yeah, not much to say other than that. It was out of control early, and then nothing happened for 30 minutes, and then Marquette lost.

I wouldn’t call it a good performance, like you might have been able to say in a couple of MU’s games against ranked teams earlier this season. It wasn’t bad, given that they did actually clamp down on Notre Dame, as the Irish scored just one goal in the final 33 minutes of the game. But part of that was Notre Dame being comfortable just burning clock, too.

If you can come up with something important to take away from this, good for you.

Now Marquette gets back-to-back games against the only Big East foe they haven’t seen yet this season. They’re not both this weekend, it’ll be on on Saturday and then one next week Saturday as well. I said that the Providence game looked like one that Marquette had a quality chance to win, and that fell apart on the Golden Eagles. I’d like to say the same thing again about the next two games, but maybe let’s hold off on that idea until we see what happens on Saturday first.

We are getting desperately close to Marquette careening towards a winless season, though. I would really like for that to not happen.

UPDATE: [3/19/21, 12:28pm CT] You can stop reading here, as Saturday’s game in New York has been postponed due to COVID issues. The Big East press release does not specify which team has the issue.

Big East Game #5: at St. John’s Red Storm (1-4, 0-4 Big East)

Date: Saturday, March 20, 2021
Time: 10am Central
Location: DaSilva Memorial Field, Queens, New York
Streaming: WatchESPN.com, with Austin Rooney on the call
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteMLax

Marquette is 6-1 all time against St. John’s. The Red Storm won the first meeting between the two teams back in 2013, snapping the first winning streak in MU program history, but it’s been all Golden Eagles since then. The games have tended towards exciting, with Marquette winning twice in overtime and by just two goals in 2015. Marquette won by a margin of 12-8 in the most recent meeting back in 2019.

The Johnnies started the year off with a hard fought 19-18 overtime win on the road against Hofstra. SJU had a 13- lead with five minutes left in the the third quarter, but penalties by the Red Storm gave the Pride the lift they needed to end up tying the thing up at 14-all and taking a 16-15 lead with 6:06 to go. St. John’s bounced back to take an 18-17 lead with 32 seconds left on a goal by Ryan Schaeffer, but Hofstra knotted it with 16 seconds left to force overtime. Mike Madsen was the hero of the day with the OT winner.

Since then, though, much like Marquette, the Red Storm have been suffering their way through Big East play. 16-8 loss at home to Providence, 19-1 loss on the road against then-#5 Georgetown, 20-6 home loss to then-#11 Denver, and finally, last Sunday, a 20-8 loss to Villanova up in Philly. The Wildcats led that one 13-2 at the half.

While Marquette has looked like a middle-ish of the road team this year even while suffering five straight losses, St. John’s has not. Their offense is okay, ranking #47 in the country per LacrosseReference.com, but they’re #64 of 74 in defensive efficiency and #68 in the country in LaxRef’s ELO comparative strength rankings. Given how badly they got bombed by their last three opponents, this probably is not a surprise to you, particularly the defensive part. St. John’s isn’t doing themselves any favors in the defensive efficiency department by getting outshot 52-34 on average.

Redshirt junior Jonathan Huber is SJU’s top scorer so far this year, tallying nine goals and two assists. Joe Madsen is tied with Huber in points with 11 through five games, but he got there with eight goals and three assists. Mike Madsen, the hero of the Hofstra game, is right behind his twin brother Joe with 10 points, with the difference being one less goal on the year. Mike is also tied for the team lead in ground balls, inching towards averaging three per game, while his co-leader, Pat Smyth, is also averaging two caused turnovers per game.

The goalkeeping situation is a mess for St. John’s. Three different guys have started a match, with Galvin Catalano and Brody Agres each starting twice. Catalano started both of the last two games, so I’d guess that he’ll be in net again on Saturday. Through 118 minutes of action on the year, the senior out of New York has a goals-against average of 19.21, which can be directly attributed to giving up all 20 goals against Denver and 16 of the 20 against Nova in just 43 minutes. Catalano is only stopping 43% of shots on goal, so good looks at the net should be enough to pierce the Red Storm defense.