A Win Is A Win: RV Marquette 9, St. Bonaventure 5

When you get two of your first three goals from defenders making plays and scoring pole goals, you might expect that big things are in store for the team for the rest of the game.

That, uh, did not happen for Marquette men’s lacrosse as Zach Granger and Mason Woodward helped the Golden Eagles get out to a 3-0 lead in the first eight minutes…… but the potential offensive explosion that implied never quite happened. Instead, perhaps it just told us that Marquette’s defense was in for a big day. Goalie Michael Allieri and friends held St. Bonaventure without a goal for over 20 minutes AND to only one goal for over 40 minutes. That means it was 7-1 Marquette late in the third quarter, and the Golden Eagles were able to cruise to the 9-5 victory from there. Marquette is now 5-3 on the year.

Wanna see some pole goals? Here’s Granger starting the game’s scoring off:

And here’s Woodward tallying off the face off after Nolan Rappis made it 2-0 Marquette:

NEAT.

Marquette was carrying the general sense of play for the first half. They outshot the Bonnies 26-14 in the first half, which is slightly more impressive when you realize that the Golden Eagles had nine turnovers against just seven for the visitors. The shooting advantage for Marquette continued into the third quarter as MU fired off the first three shots of the second half before SBU got their first. Things were 7-4 favoring the Golden Eagles when Andrew Bowman scored the first goal of the quarter with a man advantage to extend the Marquette lead to 7-1 at that point.

It was 7-3 Marquette with 15 minutes to go, and Bobby O’Grady stuck two in a little more than four minutes apart to make it a six goal lead with nine minutes to play. When you’ve only allowed three goals in just over 50 minutes, a six goal lead is a pretty sizeable margin. Thankfully that is true, as MU was done scoring for the day, but St. Bonaventure only managed two more strikes the rest of the way. One of them was with just 27 seconds left, so that barely counts relative to the Golden Eagles shutting things down and closing the door on the W.

Bobby O’Grady led Marquette with four goals, and since they only scored nine as a team, no one else scored more than one. Jake Stegman added an assist to his goal for two points, and Will Foster had two helpers to be the only other multi-point guy. Zach Granger led the field players with four ground balls, while four different players each chipped in one caused turnover.

How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and FloSports?

Up Next: Big East play! Yes, Marquette still has one more road non-conference game yet to come, but for now, starting off league action with a win is Job #1. That first game is coming up next week Saturday, as the Golden Eagles will head out east to face Providence for an 11am Central time start on FloSports. The Friars are 4-5 on the year after taking a 25-8 loss to #14 North Carolina on Saturday.