Marquette Douses The Flames

Rachel Johnson got credit for whatever happened in the 17th minute of Thursday night’s game at Valley Field, and thus, Marquette women’s soccer picked up a 1-0 victory over Illinois Chicago. The Golden Eagles are now 2-3-0 on the year after snapping their three match losing streak.

Look, I was at the game. I don’t know what happened on the goal. Here’s a replay of it. This is not helpful in making it more clear at least from my vantage point, because this camera angle is pretty close to my view.

You can see the Marquette players — MU has charcoal/slate striped uniforms now, don’t ask — reacting like it went in, the camera work cuts off the people in the Birdcage reacting like it went in, you can see the referee signaling for the clock to stop, but it takes her a minute to actually signal a goal..... but she eventually does.

From the replay, I can clearly see that Rachel Johnson is the one who creates the strike that sends the ball into the post, and that’s definitely Katrina Wetherell coming over from kicking the corner. Wetherell was credited with the lone assist on the play, so I presume that the official call is that the ball was far enough over the goal line when it hit the post for it to count as a goal. Here’s the official GoMarquette.com description of Johnson’s goal:

The lone goal came in the 17^th minute from Rachel Johnson, who found the back of the net for the first time this season. The score was set up from the first of four corner kicks that the Golden Eagles had on the night, with Katrina Wetherell tallying the assist.

Not helpful in determining exactly what the deal was.

That was in the 17th minute, and the rest of the game was not particularly thrill a minute. Marquette controlled the action, finishing up outshooting UIC 15-5 at the end of the night. Mikki Easter did make two saves, one in each half, to preserve the clean sheet.

Up Next: Marquette will be back in action on Sunday afternoon when St. Thomas comes to town. The Tommies are in their first year in Division 1, and they have a record of 2-2-1 after beating Wyoming on Tuesday night.