2022 Big East Men’s Lacrosse Tournament

#1 Georgetown Hoyas (13-1, 5-0 Big East) vs #4 Marquette Golden Eagles (4-10, 2-3 Big East)

Date: Thursday, May 7, 2022
Time: 7:30pm Central
Location: Cooper Field, Washington, D.C.
Television: CBS Sports Network
Streaming: CBSSports.com
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteMLax

Season Series: Georgetown won, 20-10
All Time Series: Georgetown leads, 6-5

I choose to take the most positive possible outlook on this game. That is the following: It is good that Marquette is back in the Big East tournament after not qualifying for the four team field since 2018. In 2019, Marquette was just 2-3 in Big East action, and that wasn’t good enough to get in. 2020, league play never started. 2021, MU went 3-7 in a home-and-home conference schedule, which tied the Golden Eagles with Providence for fourth place, but goal differential in head-to-head games put the Friars into the field and kept Marquette out, even before they won their regular season finale to get that tie.

So it’s been a while since we’ve written a preview for a Big East semifinal on this here internet website, and I think merely having the opportunity for that to happen again is a good thing. Bright side of life, and all that.

After all, not much has gone well for the Golden Eagles this season. The 4-10 record, 2-7 outside the Big East, tells you a lot about how not well things have gone at face value. Part of Marquette’s problems this season can be entirely attributed to injuries. Just 11 men — in a sport where 10 guys are on the field at all times and effectively has at least 13 guys that could be listed as starters — have appeared in all 14 games this season. Only half of the 10 guys listed as starters in the season opener against Bellarmine played in all 14 games. Between the five guys who didn’t appear in every game, Mason Woodward was the most active with 11 games played, and that group of five combined to miss 33 of the 50 possible games between them.

That’s not even getting into stuff like freshman Nolan Rappis going out for the year after putting up four goals and a helper in the first three games of the year. It has been a rough go of it for the Golden Eagles, sometimes quite literally in a physical sense. Time after time this year, I’ve had the reaction of “oh, he’s getting playing time now? Huh.” because there was a new name added to the injury list and it was Next Man Up for head coach Andrew Stimmel.

And yet, through it all, Marquette kept fighting, and they took care of business in the two games they absolutely had to win to get into the Big East tournament and so here they are. That has to count for something, and so I take the positive view on it.

You kind of have to take the upsides where you can get them here because, uh, well, odds are Thursday night on CBS Sports Network probably isn’t going to go well for the Golden Eagles. Back on April 16th, Georgetown beat Marquette 20-10 after taking a 10-3 lead with 10:43 left in the second quarter. 12-6 at the half wasn’t much better, and 17-8 at the start of the fourth was definitely worse. Would you like some underlying stats? Georgetown had more shots on goal (46) than Marquette had shots at all (32) in that game.

That’s the kind of thing that happens when you’re playing against the #2 team in the country that’s only #2 because they lost one time to a team that the undefeated #1 team in the country beat. Georgetown’s still #2 in the country heading into this game, and once again, Marquette will be playing them on their home field. Maybe things go differently, or maybe the lacrosse gods bless the sticks of MU, or I don’t know what, but this might be a “peek through your fingers” type of watch.

We’ll end on some good news: Bobby O’Grady will be given the opportunity to break Marquette’s single season goals record twice against the Hoyas in this game. The freshly crowned Big East Freshman of the Year scored five times against the Georgetown defense to become the second MU player to ever tally 40 goals in a season and then break Ryan McNamara’s record with his 41st goal of the season back during the regular season. If he tallies a goal against the Hoyas on Thursday night, each and every goal he scores will break his record again and again. It’s kind of fun and weird to be able to do that, so tune in to see if he can do that if nothing else.