Marquette Loses To Saint Louis

A scoreless first half turned into a flurry of second half goals on Tuesday night in Missouri as Saint Louis knocked off YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles, 2-1. The loss drops Marquette to 4-4-1 on the year as they finish off non-conference action with a mark of 4-4-0.

The first half was a pretty good half for Marquette. Any time you outshoot someone in a half, it’s a pretty good half. Was it great that the shot margin was 5-2? Eh, maybe not, at least not aesthetically, but it’s hard to argue with being scoreless at the half on the road.

John Klein ruined that in the 48th minute, getting a high angle low bounding shot to go past MU keeper Chandler Hallwood for the 1-0 SLU lead. That was, of course, on Saint Louis’ first shot of the second half, so all of that work to hold them to two shots in the first 45 minutes was kind of out the door.

Marquette had something of an advantage over the next little while as Saint Louis got a little foul happy while protecting their lead, and SLU’s Carlos Tofern had to paddle away a shot from Mitar Mitrovic in the 60th minute. MU’s pressure up the field finally broke through in the 63rd minute as Abdoul Karim Pare equalized the match partly because Tofern had no chance to figure out that there was a shot coming at him since Pare nearly had his back to the net on his shot attempt.

Brand new match with less than 30 minutes to go. That deadlock held for just under 10 minutes before Klein made his presence felt again. It was great work by Hallwood to get into traffic and punch away a corner kick. It’s not really his fault that his punchout went pretty much on a perfect angle to a stationary Klein who volleyed it straight back into the net.

MU had a couple of corner kicks after that and Pare had a shot saved by Tofern to prevent yet another equalizer, but that was the extent of the real offensive chances for the Golden Eagles to tie it up again.

NOT SO FUN FACT: Marquette is now 4-24-2 all time against Saint Louis and 2-8-2 since the year 2000. That’s not ideal. Maybe we should just stop banging our heads against this brick wall for a while, eh?

Up Next: With non-conference play wrapped up, the Golden Eagles launch themselves fully into Big East action for the rest of the regular season with a 0-0-1 mark and a point already in the bank after drawing with Xavier last weekend. First up on the last nine matches is a home date with Butler. First kick against the Bulldogs will be on Friday, September 30th, at 7pm Central time. BU is 5-2-1 overall and 1-0-1 in Big East action so far and they’ll be coming in on a three match unbeaten streak.