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On Tuesday, the Big East made an announcement that brought the Marquette men’s soccer regular season to an end.
As a result of COVID protocol reasons for both Marquette and Xavier, the match between the two teams on Saturday, April 10th in Cincinnati has been canceled. Due to timing for the postseason, the match will not be rescheduled, which means that the Golden Eagles have no more regular season matches left to play.
That means that Marquette has clinched the Midwest Division title in the Big East this season. The league is going by winning percentage to determine the standings, and Creighton (5-2-0, .714) can’t pass MU’s winning percentage (5-1-1, .786) with a victory in their regular season finale. MU is also nationally ranked, which is pretty neat. The April 6th United Soccer Coaches poll has the Golden Eagles at #17 in the country, while the April 5th Top Drawer Soccer poll ranks MU one spot higher at #16.
Marquette’s press release on the cancelation of the Xavier match says that “game time and location are still to be determined” for the Big East semifinals. The standings in the East Division appear to be set as there will be no more matches played amongst the top three teams, but that’s due to COVID protocol cancellations. As such, we can’t guarantee that Georgetown and Seton Hall are the two teams coming out of the East, much like Providence was forced to withdraw from the volleyball tournament. Heck, we can’t even guarantee that Marquette is all set to go on the 15th for the semifinals. If MU has a protocol issue that forced a cancellation on April 10th, it certainly sounds like playing on the 15th is not a certainty.
April 10th is the last scheduled day of action in men’s soccer in the Big East, so the bracket for the tournament will be announced at the conclusion of all the remaining regular season matches. Things might get weird between now and then in terms of who is actually in the conference tournament, but it’s been a weird season in the first place.