Marquette Women’s Soccer Preview: at #16 Georgetown

Before Marquette women’s soccer sticks their hand in the wheat thresher that is Georgetown’s defense, let’s walk through exactly what lays ahead for the Golden Eagles.

Marquette is 3-3-1 after playing seven of their 10 Big East matches this season. They picked up the draw last Thursday to snap a three match losing skid and then knocked off Villanova 1-0 on Sunday to even their record and move to 10 points in the table on the season. Heading into Thursday’s match day — a full slate of five games with St. John’s sitting out as the 11th wheel — Marquette is sitting alone in sixth place in the Big East. All that’s been clinched for them so far is they can not win the league any longer, as Georgetown is too far in front of them, and they can not finish last as Seton Hall and their three points with two matches left to play can not catch the Golden Eagles.

Anything else — second place through 10th place — is still mathematically on the table. If Marquette loses to Georgetown, and given what the Hoyas are doing, that’s feeling pretty likely, sorry everyone, that will automatically cut the Golden Eagles off from second place in the league. That would leave Marquette with just four possible spots to grab for the Big East tournament, as only the top six teams qualify.

It seems like right now is a good time to mention that Marquette’s two matches after Georgetown on Thursday are

• third place St. John’s
• second place Xavier

Yeah. So. Luck of the draw has put Marquette into this particular position where they’re going to have to figure out how to pull points out of three matches, two on the road, against the top three teams in the table at the moment if they want to get a spot in the Big East tournament. Maybe they get massive amounts of help along the way — Xavier beats Providence on Thursday, for example — and the Golden Eagles catch a break.

Or maybe, just maybe, they can figure out how to make some luck for themselves.

Big East Match #8: at #16 Georgetown Hoyas (11-1-4, 7-0-1 Big East)

Date: Thursday, October 20, 2022
Time: 1pm Central
Location: Shaw Field, Washington, D.C.
Streaming: FloFC
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWSOC

Marquette is 3-10-1 all time against Georgetown. The Golden Eagles come into this match riding a seven match losing streak against the Hoyas as well as a nine match winless streak. October 2013, when a ranked Golden Eagles squad stomped out a top 10 ranked Hoyas team 4-0, is such a long time ago. On the current losing streak, Marquette has scored just one goal, and that was from Kylie Sprecher back in 2018 in a match where the Golden Eagles eventually surrendered an equalizer and a golden goal to end up with the loss to #4 Georgetown. Since Sprecher’s goal over 219 minutes against Georgetown ago, the Hoyas have scored seven unanswered goals.

All of that was to drive home a point about the Hoyas as currently constructed right this second in 2022. Goals for Georgetown in eight matches of Big East play this fall: 12. Goals against? Zero. None. Zilch. Zip. Goals for overall: 27. Goals against overall: Six.

Current shutout streak: 996:22.

If Georgetown manages to hold Marquette scoreless for three minutes and 38 seconds — and let’s be clear, this should be easily accomplished, no knock on Marquette here at all — they will not have allowed a goal for 1,000 straight minutes this season dating all the way back to an 84th minute goal allowed to Maryland on September 1st. 11 full matches in a row without allowing a goal.

By the way, if you’re wondering how this team with this kind of run is only ranked #16 in the country, well, that’s because Georgetown started out the year ranked #19 and then went 1-1-3 in their first five.

With Henley Tippins out of action following a five goals in six matches start to her Georgetown career, Gia Vicari is GU’s top offensive threat. She has a team high five goals, tied with Tippins, but you get the point. Vicari also has three assists, which is a five-way tie for the second most on the team, and that gives her a team high 13 points. Depending on how Thursday goes, Julia Leas, Tatum Lenain, or Maja Lardner could all easily join Vicari in double digit points town, as they are sitting on 9, 9, and 8 points respectively.

Freshman Cara Martin started out the season as Georgetown’s keeper, playing every minute of every match up through the Columbia contest, the first of the 11 straight full matches with a shutout. Allie Augur jumped in for the next match, but Martin and Augur have been going back and forth all season since. Augur has played every minute of three of the last four, including last time out against Providence, so it seems like she’s the pick to play against Marquette, but I’m not 100% certain why Martin was starting in the first place or why they’ve been kind of alternating. It’s possible that MU could end up seeing Martin. It’s not like there’s a notable preference for the Golden Eagles. Martin is stopping 80% of shots on goal, even with that shaky team record start to the season, and through 900 minutes played, she’s allowing 0.60 goals per 90 minutes. Augur is perfect through six matches with six shutouts and 15 saves on all 15 shots on goal. Law of averages says that Augur has to give up a goal eventually, in theory, so maaaaaaybe that’s better for Marquette?