Marquette Men’s Soccer Wins The Midwest Division!

The regular season for Big East men’s soccer came to an end on Saturday, and thus, the league can officially call all of the divisional races and announce who will be participating in the conference tournament. YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles are the spring 2021 Big East Midwest Division champions!

The Golden Eagles finished the regular season with a record of 8-1-1 overall and 5-1-1 in Big East play. That has them easily in front of second place Creighton at 5-3-0 in league action, even though the Bluejays are the only team to defeat Marquette in Big East play this year. Thus, Marquette will be the #1 seed out of the Midwest Division, while Creighton is the #2 seed as the conference uses a four team format for the tournament this season.

Marquette is currently ranked #17th in the country by United Soccer Coaches and #16 by Top Drawer Soccer. This is particularly notable, since it will be another ranked team lining up across the field from the Golden Eagles in the Big East tournament semifinals. Here’s the bracket:

That’s Seton Hall as the #2 seed coming out of the East Division with a record of 7-1-3 overall and 5-1-2 in the Big East. The Pirates are currently ranked #9 in the country by United Soccer Coaches and #13 by Top Drawer Soccer, so this semifinal match holds a lot of national weight. With 36 teams in the NCAA tournament and just 12 at-large berths available, it’s going to be hard to get into the tournament but a big win against a ranked foe like this could make a major difference. With that said, as of April 4th, Marquette was ranked #10 in the NCAA’s RPI calculation, so maaaaaaaaybe this is just a case of Marquette getting a chance to bolster their stance in the committee’s eyes.

In either case, Marquette has not even played a ranked team yet this season. Getting a win against the Pirates would go a long way towards confirming that the Golden Eagles are worth of their rankings.

All of this will be settled out one way or another this coming Thursday, April 15th. That’s when the Big East semifinals will be played with the Marquette/Seton Hall contest scheduled to start at 2:30pm Central time. Georgetown will be the host for all three games of the conference tournament with the defending national champion Hoyas also participating as the #1 seed in the East Division. The Hoyas will play Creighton in the other semifinal match on Thursday with first kick set for 11am CT and both matches will be streamed on the Big East Digital Network on YouTube.

The winners will advance to the conference title game with the Big East’s automatic bid on the line. That match is scheduled for Saturday, April 17th, with first kick set for 2pm Central time on FS2.