Marquette Men’s Lacrosse Preview: at St. John’s

I think the right way to go about this is to consider Saturday’s Marquette men’s lacrosse game the start of a brand new third 2024 campaign for the Golden Eagles.

CAMPAIGN #1: Three games, 3-0 to start the year
CAMPAIGN #2: Six games, 0-5 record before clipping St. Bonaventure last Saturday

Let’s take allllll of that and just throw it straight in the bin. None of it matters relative to what comes next. New week, new opponent, new season, let’s just start clean and go from here.

It helps, of course, that Saturday is the start of Marquette’s five game Big East schedule. That’s all they’ve got left on deck this year, five contests against league foes, and the four teams with the best records at the end of of it get to go to the Big East tournament. The other two teams will see their seasons come to an end.

Avoiding that end would be good and fun. Step #1 on that plan: Beating the only team in the conference that has a worse record than Marquette to this point of the season. That’s who the Golden Eagles play on Saturday. Asserting dominance over the Red Storm is a good idea on face value, and it’s a pretty good idea relative to the Big East tournament field as well.

Cards on the table: Georgetown is currently ranked #9 in the country. Denver is currently ranked #10 in the country. 6-3 Villanova is receiving votes in this week’s Inside Lacrosse media poll. Beating these teams will be hard. Marquette had this point proved to them last year when they lost in overtime to all three of them.

So: To avoid needing to beat them to get into the four team field, start off the brand new third 2024 campaign with a win. Make things easy for head coach Future Andrew Stimmel and his team, Future Marquette. Business will pick up in a big way next week with the Hoyas, so let’s do everything in the present tense to avoid putting big pressure on that one. Makes sense?

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Marquette men’s lacrosse starts their game at 10am Central. Marquette women’s lacrosse starts their game at 11am Central. So I’m going to pay attention to the men’s game as long as I need to before pointing my viewing towards the women’s game..... and after last week’s possibly viewing-related fiasco, maybe that’s for the best?

Big East Game #1: at St. John’s Red Storm (3-7)

Date: Saturday, March 30, 2024
Time: 10am Central
Location: Belson Stadium, Jamaica, New York
Streaming: FloSports
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteMLax

Marquette is 10-1 all time against St. John’s. The Red Storm won the first ever meeting with a 15-10 score in Queens in 2013. It’s been all Golden Eagles since then, although there were a trio of overtime games in there and a 15-14 contest in 2021 as well. Marquette won 20-10 after trailing 2-0 in the Valley a year ago for the most recent encounter.

Well, the good news for St. John’s is that Year Two under head coach Justin Turri is already going much better than Year One. 2023 was a 14 loss season, and if you’ve got a rough picture of lacrosse in your head and you can do some quick math, then you’ve already figured out that means it was a winless campaign. As you can see from the top of the section, the Red Storm already has three wins this year, so that’s an improvement. Even better: They’re arguably improving within the season, as the Johnnies have won three of their last five games. Did they win any notable games against tippity top competition? Mind your business.

St. John’s has a pair of 19 goal scorers so far this year, which means that “Not That” Brian Kelly and Bobby Seel are just barely under averaging two goals a game for the Red Storm. These guys are also #1 and #2 respectively in the assists column with Kelly’s 12 helpers earning him the top spot in the points column by three over Seel.

Kyle Munson has started eight of SJU’s 10 games this season, and he’s the only netminder with more than 110 minutes played, so we’ll presume he’ll be out there for the Red Storm on Saturday morning. He’s actually stopping over 51% of shots on goal this year, so he’s doing a pretty solid job of fending off shots on goal. Now, with that said, the Red Storm are #65 in the country (out of 76 teams) in defensive efficiency according to Lacrosse Reference. That does kind of explain how he’s allowing 12.68 goals per 60 minutes played this year, and we should probably note that a 16 save outing against Le Moyne and another 15 saves against Binghamton miiiiiiiiight be propping up Munson’s stats this season.