Marquette Men’s Soccer Moves Into The National Rankings

On Monday night, Marquette men’s soccer went up 3-1 on #21 Wisconsin in the first 46 minutes of the match, then spent the final 40 minutes holding off the Badgers with just 10 men to lock up the win. That W moved the Golden Eagles to 6-0-0 to start the season, the best start to a season for head coach Louis Bennett’s squad since the 2012 team started 12-0-0.

During the day on Monday, Top Drawer Soccer updated their top 25 rankings. This means that, officially, Marquette was still only 5-0-0 and without a win over a ranked opponent. That didn’t stop TDS from installing the Golden Eagles as the #23 team in the country. Big East affiliate memberAkron sits at #5 and Georgetown shows up at #17 to round out the notable names in the rankings. Missing from the list is Wisconsin, who had been #15 last week, but the combination of achieving that ranking and then 1) losing to UIC and 2) drawing 0-0 with Mercer was enough to completely tumble the Badgers out of the rankings before they made it to Valley Fields on Monday night.

On Tuesday afternoon, United Soccer Coaches released their brand new top 25 poll, and whooooooboy, would you look at that? Marquette is your new #13 team in the country. Yes, that’s right, based on the strength of beating #21 Wisconsin — the UIC loss happened before that poll came out last Tuesday — and moving to 6-0-0, the Golden Eagles go from outside the top 25 to a top 15 squad. MU snagged 97 points in the polling, landing them between #12 Vermont with 109 points and just barely ahead of #14 Denver with 95 points.

Akron comes in at #3 in the USC poll, and they picked up one of the eight first place votes, too. Georgetown is just barely outside the top 25, missing out on the rankings by just one point this week. Seton Hall racked up two points worth of polling as the Pirates are 3-1-1 on the year after going to a 1-1 draw with the Harvard squad that Marquette beat by way of an own goal this season in their most recent match.

Marquette returns to action with an eye on keeping zeroes in the loss and tie columns on Friday when they get Big East play started. That first contest is a road trip to Omaha for a 7:30pm kickoff against Creighton. The Bluejays were picked to win the Big East’s Midwest Division this season, but they suffered a 2-1 loss to Kansas City on Tuesday night to drop to 1-3-2 on the year.

You can check out the full Top Drawer Soccer rankings here and the full United Soccer Coaches poll here.