#18 Marquette Gets Run By Northern Illinois

On Friday night, Marquette men’s soccer played a road game against Northern Illinois. For a variety of reasons that don’t interest you, I knew I wasn’t going to be able start watching this match when it started. Since Northern Illinois was keeping this one behind their internal subscription service, this meant that I knew I wasn’t going to be watching this game.

So, a bit after 7pm, I was finally free to fire up the Twitter Machine to get an update on the game. Here’s the first thing I saw:

I don’t know what part smacked me in the face harder: The 3-0 score, the fact that it was only in the 30th minute at the time, or the fact that the third goal was officially in the books as an own goal.

All of that collectively sucks, and not just because Marquette is currently ranked #18 in the country. Marquette could have come into Friday night winless on the season so far and being in a 3-0 hole on a 30th minute own goal would still suck.

I can’t even provide you with highlights (lowlights?) of the goals, as Northern Illinois didn’t clip the footage on their own Twitter. Shame. I’d like to at least see how Marquette conceded the goals, but such is life.

Officially, NIU scored on their second and sixth shots of the match, and the own goal would have been shot number seven if that’s how things were counted. The rest of the match didn’t go well for Marquette, as the Huskies outshot the Golden Eagles 18-7 overall across 90 minutes and 10-4 in the second half. Even with a resounding lead, Northern Illinois either maintained a throttle hold on the offensive course of the match…… or, and this is presumably worse, Marquette kept giving them opportunities to shoot and they just couldn’t help themselves.

What a mess. One of our questions about Marquette for this season was how much of last season was an illusion due to the Golden Eagles winning a whole bunch of 50/50 games that went to overtime. Right now, after this loss? Things are looking more illusion based than reality based, that’s for sure.

Up Next: Marquette gets a chance to pick up the pieces on Monday night. They’ll be back at Valley Fields for one final non-conference tune up before Big East play starts on September 18th. Monday’s opponent will be Wisconsin, and first kick is set for 7pm.