Marquette Men’s Lacrosse Earns Inside Lacrosse Top 20 Votes

Back on Saturday, Marquette men’s lacrosse picked up the first ranked win during the tenure of head coach Andrew Stimmel, beating #5 Penn State 12-11 in a neutral site game on Long Island.

That leads to a natural question: Is that enough for a 4-3 team to earn national poll votes?

The answer? Yes!

While Inside Lacrosse does not show the point totals for teams that do not make it into the top 20, the fact of the matter is that Marquette is clearly listed in the Receiving Votes area of the Week Six poll. Princeton — at 2-4, by the way — is at #20 in the rankings with 32 points, so Marquette is clearly somewhere south of there. They might not be that much south of there, as MU is the first team listed in the Receiving Votes department. The teams aren’t in alphabetical order — Harvard and Delaware are listed after Marquette, for example — so the conclusion to draw here is that Marquette is the unofficial #21 team in the country right now.

Which is kind of bonkers based on one win.... but also Penn State was coming off wins against the teams that are ranked #5, #12, and #15 in this week’s poll. Yes, I know, blah blah, transitive wins, but at least that explains where the voters are coming from on this.

Undefeated Notre Dame is the best ranked team on Marquette’s schedule this week, as the 6-0 Irish are the #1 team in the country. They’re the unanimous choice with all 23 first place votes and up one spot from last week. Cornell, who gets a visit from Marquette in April, comes in at #5, a two spot improvement. Villanova is the best ranked Big East team at #7 in the country, jumping up from #7 a week ago. Penn State has dropped to #10 after losing to Marquette, while Georgetown bettered themselves by one spot to #16 this week. Denver enters the poll at #17 this week, and the rankings say they were #21 last week... and yes, they were sitting in the exact same spot that Marquette currently occupies.

Marquette returns to action on Saturday afternoon when they host St. Bonaventure at Valley Fields. First draw is set for Noon Central, and FloSports will have the streaming broadcast. The Bonnies are just 1-7 after taking a 22-6 road loss to Syracuse on Tuesday night.

You can check out the entire top 20 right here.