Marquette Women’s Lacrosse Struggles With Connecticut

We have our first data point in the “How will Big East teams be affected by playing each other twice in one weekend” study that will be continually ongoing during the 2021 women’s lacrosse season. Data Point #1 tells us that the team that wins the first meeting will have a significant advantage right out of the gate in Game #2. On Sunday afternoon, Connecticut took a 7-1 lead on Marquette in the first 13 minutes and never led by fewer than four goals on their way to handing the Golden Eagles an 18-13 loss. Marquette is now 3-5 on the year but 0-2 in Big East play after taking losses in both games this weekend.

Things went off the rails for Marquette after Caroline Steller scored for the Golden Eagles to make it 2-1 less than three minutes into the game. Over the next 10 minutes, UConn scored five straight goals, including one from Lauren Barry with a woman advantage to start the run and a shorthanded goal from Grace Coon. Marquette’s efforts to get back in the game were short circuited by Connecticut, as the Huskies answered everything from MU. Goals from Lydia Foust and Steller? Next two came from UConn including another shorthanded goal. Shea Garcia scored on a different yellow card by the Huskies, but UConn’s Sydney Watson answered that to make it 10-4 at the half.

Connecticut scored the first two goals of the second half to make it three straight for the Huskies and push the margin to eight at 12-4. I don’t want to say that was officially the end of it for Marquette, because 27 minutes of lacrosse is a lot of lacrosse. But Marquette couldn’t get enough going on either end of the field to put together a run. The best that they could do was three straight goals, capped by an EWO goal from Steller with less than six minutes to go that made it 15-10. UConn scored the next three to eliminate any chance for the Golden Eagles even as they scored three more of their own in the final two minutes of the game to give us that 18-13 final score.

We have to address the volume of goals scored while one team had an advantage in the number of players on the field. Six of the goals in this game were scored by the team with the advantage, and three of the goals in the game were scored by the team that was shorthanded at the time. 29% of the goals in the game came with someone standing on the sidelines after getting issued a yellow card! What the hell?! That’s crazy.

Megan Menzuber and Lydia Foust got into the action in this game after being held without a goal on Friday. Both women scored twice in the game, but the big star in the game was yet again Caroline Steller. While UConn was doing a good job controlling the chances from Menzuber (nine shots) and Foust (five shots), Steller threw in another five goals to match her total from the first game in the weekend set. As a result, Steller is now leading Marquette in goals this season with 22 and she is tied with Menzuber in points on the year with 29.

How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com?

Up Next: Marquette’s next four games are all scheduled to be on the road. First up is a weekend set at Villanova this coming Friday and Sunday and both games will start at 11am Central time. The Wildcats are 2-6 on the year and have lost three straight after losing a pair to Georgetown over the weekend.