#19 Marquette Remains Undefeated After Wild Win Over SIUE

You know the old saying “Never a doubt about this one!” when talking about the result of a sporting contest? Yeah, Sunday’s Marquette men’s soccer match against Southern Illinois-Edwardsville was the other thing: Always in doubt. Officially, the Golden Eagles didn’t spend a lot of time trailing, as they were only behind on the scoreboard for less than six minutes, but that didn’t mean that MU was ever comfortable as they eventually snagged a 4-3 win over the Cougars when the horn finally sounded at the end of 90 minutes. Marquette is now 2-0-0 on the season while SIUE falls to 0-1-1.

The scoring didn’t start early as it took until nearly 24 minutes had completely gone by before the first ball went in the net. That one was a little bit of luck and a little bit of skill as Lukas Sunesson dispossessed an SIUE defender, turned the corner, and slipped it past keeper Lluis Martorell for the 1-0 lead.

The lead lasted for not even 15 minutes before the Cougars pulled even, and that 1-1 tie lasted much less than that. Alex Pontoni recorded the equalizer on a header for SIUE in the 39th minute and, coming off a corner kick, Max Broughton created the 2-1 halftime score in the 41st minute. That’s a bad 45 minutes for the #19 team in the country, to say the least, especially as the Cougars outshot MU 5-3 in the opening half.

The lead for the visitors didn’t last very long into the second period, as an early corner kick for Marquette allowed Edrey Caceres and Harvey Read to partner up for their second corner kick header goal combo of the season. This one is the much more direct variety as Read blasted the header into the far side of the net instead of taking advantage of bouncing past the keeper like he did against Green Bay in the opener.

This 2-2 tie nearly fell apart on Marquette rather quickly as the Golden Eagles conceded a penalty kick in the 52nd minute. But Chandler Hallwood did Chandler Hallwood things and had everything right to come up with the save to keep the match even.

Two minutes later, Caceres did Hallwood a solid after that great save. An attempted clearance by SIUE went straight at Caceres, and almost more by luck than anything else, the ball immediately settled at his feet. He reared back and quickly fired to take advantage of Martorell’s evolving reaction and it went in to the right back corner of the net.

I think it’s fun to watch Jonathan Robinson treat this goal like a much bigger deal than Caceres does, right up to nearly dragging Caceres into dancing and celebrating.

That 3-2 lead held until the 74th minute when Beto Soto got on the board for his first goal of the season. It’s a great individual play by the Houston native to keep pushing into space and find an angle to shoot and score.

As you can see from the text of the tweet with the video, uh, well, going up 4-2 with 16 minutes to play was not as helpful as you would think it would be. SIUE’s Oskar Lenz scored just 18 seconds later to make it a 4-3 contest. That is maybe the exact definition of DO NOT WANT with maybe the “we scored an equalizer, they re-take the lead 18 seconds later” bumping it out of the top spot.

Neither team was particularly threatening the rest of the way, though. Soto recorded MU’s final shot of the game in the 78th minute, missing to the right, while SIUE’s Sam Layton missed over the top of the cage in the 88th minute. That was it for major offensive chances the rest of the way, and MU hung on for the win.

As it turns out, Marquette’s defense is still more of a work in progress than the one shot allowed performance against Green Bay led us to believe. Edwardsville outshot Marquette 14-9 in the match, although just five of their shots were on target. Hallwood made just two saves in the match, but it’s hard to undervalue his PK save after MU only won by one goal at the end of the day.

Wanna watch a full highlight reel courtesy of FloFC and GoMarquette.com?

Up Next: The Golden Eagles are off until Friday when they’ll start off a home/road split weekend. The home date is the first one, and they’ll play host to Kansas City with a 7:05 pm Central time first kick. The Roos are 0-1-1 on the year, but that doesn’t tell you the whole story as they drew with #15 Virginia Tech and lost to #21 James Madison.