Marquette Men’s Soccer Moves Up To #13 In The New United Soccer Coaches Poll

Marquette Golden Eagles men’s soccer started out the year with a 2-0-0 record after wins over Green Bay and Southern Illinois-Edwardsville since Thursday night. The GB victory was pretty straight forward as MU shut them out and shut the Phoenix down, holding them to just one shot all night. Sunday’s contest against the Cougars was a bit wilder as the Golden Eagles needed all four of the goals that they scored to win 4-3 at the final horn.

And yet.....

The United Soccer Coaches top 25 poll voters were impressed with what they saw, it seems. With the pair of wins, Marquette has gone from #19 in the preseason poll up to #13 in Tuesday’s freshly released poll, the first since the season started.

Marquette snagged 279 points in the polling, which drops them in between VCU with 298 points and New Hampshire with 257 points. As we discussed in the preseason poll, things are incredibly non-power-conference-y around these parts. Sure, the top six teams in the USC poll are all power conference teams, but Marshall comes in at #7, and it gets wild from there. Between the Thundering Herd and #23 Lipscomb, there are eight teams from outside the Major Seven conferences. That’s wild! Nearly a full third of the top 25 are mid-majors, and hoooooooooboy are there even more in the receiving votes department.

In terms of Marquette’s schedule, well, Big East play is shaping up to be a hoot. Georgetown moved from #5 in the preseason to #2 in the new poll, while Seton Hall comes in at #20 after being in the preseason top 10. The Pirates went to a scoreless draw with Temple in the only game that counted before the ballots had to be turned in, although they did get a 4-2 win over Delaware on Monday night. We’ll have to wait to see how that benefits them next week. Providence is in the receiving votes department after shutting out Fordham 3-0 in their opener and wrecking Saint Peter’s 6-2 on Sunday.

MU has a non-conference game that’s gotten a bit spicier with the new poll as well. Coming up on Labor Day, the Golden Eagles will take a trip out to visit Tulsa. The Golden Hurricane are now the unofficial #28 team in the country after earning 38 points in this week’s poll. They made a trip down to Omaha to start their year and came away with wins over Creighton and Nebraska-Omaha and will host #8 Missouri State before the Golden Eagles come to town.

Marquette has a home date before taking to the road for the first time this season. On Friday night, MU will host Kansas City at Valley Fields. First kick is set for 7:05pm Central time.

You can check out the entire top 25 right here.