Marquette Women’s Soccer Picked Eighth In Big East Preseason Poll

The 2023 preseason poll is out for women’s soccer in the Big East and well, it appears that the Big East coaches are not big fans of Marquette this season.

The Golden Eagles have landed in 8th place in the preseason poll. They earned 34 points in the polling of the league’s coaches where they are not allowed to vote for their own teams. Providence is the team in seventh place after earning 47 points, while Villanova is the team in 9th place with 33 points, just one behind Marquette. So yes, that means the coaches as a group don’t see much difference between MU and the Wildcats, and not much held Marquette off from being in ninth place out of 11 squads.

Georgetown is the unanimous favorite in the league, earning all 10 votes that didn’t come from GU head coach Dave Nolan. His vote went to Xavier, who landed in second place overall with 89 points. As befitting a league that was extremely tight after the top two spots a year ago, the preseason poll has four teams just 10 points apart. St. John’s is at 73, Butler is at 69, Creighton at 67, and UConn comes in at 63. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there’s not a strong majority picking any one of those four at any one of the four spots they take up in the poll.

There’s a drop off from UConn down to 47 points for Providence, and then another bit of a drop to Marquette and Villanova. DePaul (16 points) and Seton Hall (14) are occupying the final tier in the preseason poll totals.

Marquette does not have any players on the 11 woman preseason all-Big East team, which has just two unanimous votes on it. Unsurprisingly, those two are both from Georgetown, and they also take home preseason all-league individual honors. Julia Leas is the Preseason Defensive Player of the Year, while Allie Augur is the Preseason Goalkeeper of the Year. Neither woman was my pick for that award when I made my picks back at the start of August, but that’s more about Georgetown being the only team without their 2023 roster on their website than anything else. I fully expected to see Leas and Augur suddenly and magically available, and look, there they are.

I did get my pick for Preseason Offensive Player of the Year correct, with Butler’s Abby Isger getting the nod. The argument for her was an easy one: She led the league in total points in 2022. I’m very curious as to why she’s not the unanimous choice here, but perhaps that has to do with Butler being picked fourth.

As for my picks for the preseason all-Big East team, I went 7-for-11, with two of my misses going in the books as Augur and Leas. Oh well. I went with Georgetown’s Natalie Means in order to round out the forward group over Providence’s Meg Hughes with my decision being almost entirely “let’s put a Hoya in because there aren’t that many.” Augur and Leas change that, so you can see how maybe the coaches tilted in the other direction as a group. My other miss comes by way of the league allowing the coaches to vote in four forwards and four midfielders, thus leaving space for just two defenders. I got both women they put on, but my third pick for balance amongst the position groups, Butler’s Aliya Diagne, got the short end of the stick here.

Marquette begins the season on Thursday, August 17th, when they play host to preseason #18 Northwestern. First kick at Valley Fields is scheduled for 7pm Central time.