It Looks Like This Is The Marquette Women’s Soccer Fall 2021 Schedule?

It’s been over a month since Marquette volleyball announced their fall schedule. As such, I’ve been waiting to see when the men’s and women’s soccer schedules would drop. I wandered myself over to GoMarquette.com’s pages for each team on Friday afternoon, making sure I hadn’t missed a recent press release. I had not, as the front item on the women’s soccer page was the press release about the university’s golf outing/fundraiser that was published on July 1st. I was about to move on when I noticed the two notations of “(exhibition)” over on the schedule preview on the front page.

Wait a minute.

Those previews should be the final few games of the spring season, so nothing should be an exhibition. I clicked over to the schedule page.

Well, would you look at that. A fall 2021 schedule, just sitting there for all the world to see. Two exhibition games, six home non-conference games, two road non-conference games, five home Big East games, five road Big East games.

The exhibitions are both on the road, and both against Big Ten foes. MU will tangle with Wisconsin on August 7th before visiting Purdue a week later to shake things out a little bit more before things start counting for real.

The season opener is set for Thursday, August 19th, when Central Michigan comes to Valley Fields. That will be the first of three straight home dates to start the season, as the Chippewas will be followed by Green Bay and then Notre Dame.

Marquette’s biggest test of the non-conference slate will be their first official road game of the season. The Golden Eagles will swing out to Utah for a pair of contests, and first up on that swing will be BYU. The Cougars went 11-4-1 in the spring season, earning a #12 seed in the NCAA tournament. Utah State will be the back end of Marquette’s road trip.

After those two matches, which will be MU’s first two of September, the Golden Eagles return home for three more home dates before Big East play starts. UIC will be up first, followed by St. Thomas, and then North Dakota State. This will be St. Thomas’ first season in Division 1, but they went 5-0-0 in their spring season to close out their time in Division 3 on a 22 match unbeaten streak at 17-0-5. That seems good, so we’ll see how that translates when September 12th rolls around, I guess.

This might be a sneaky good non-conference schedule? With the obvious exception of St. Thomas, every single team on the slate finished in the top 200 of the RPI in the spring. Now, sure, there’s a lot of questions about how accurate the RPI was given how weird the spring season was, but if those top 200 rankings carry over to the fall, then there just are no breaks on the schedule.

Speaking of things that are not on the schedule, you may have noticed that I did not mention UW-Milwaukee. Ignoring last season, because it was weird and you can’t make any statements about schedules, Marquette has faced off against their crosstown rivals in every season dating back to 1993 when the two sides met for the first time. It’s weird that the women’s version of The Milwaukee Cup will not be contested this fall, but that’s what’s going on.

After going with regional divisions in the spring, the Big East is going with the full format “play everyone once” schedule that we’re used to seeing. With Connecticut in the fold, it’s split evenly with five dates at home and five on the road. MU starts off league play with Butler at home on September 23rd. Four of the next five are on the road, which means Marquette gets to close the regular season out with three of the final four at home, including each of the final two. The Golden Eagles also get to avoid Georgetown until the second-to-last game of the regular season and they get the defending Big East champs at home, too. Senior Day is scheduled for October 28th, with DePaul providing the opposition. I’m not sure exactly how many seniors will be on the roster this fall as Marquette has not updated that part of the website yet, but the Golden Eagles listed four seniors in the spring and only one was recognized for that season’s Senior Day.

Here’s the full schedule! Mark your calendars as needed.