#16 Georgetown Blanks Marquette

Georgetown women’s soccer came into Thursday’s contest against Marquette with shutouts in each of their last 11 matches. Less than four minutes in, GU’s shutout streak passed 1,000 minutes. It can not be a surprise that the Golden Eagles got shutout by the Hoyas, and only managing two shots in the entire match? Not exactly a stunner either with Georgetown only allowing 6.9 per game coming in.

However.

It’s not like Marquette didn’t make the #16 ranked team in the country fight for their 1-0 victory at Shaw Field in Washington. Georgetown came in averaging over 14 shots per game. By half, if you want to think about it that way, GU was getting seven shots a half. Marquette held them under that number in both halves and limited the Hoyas to just 11 shots in the entire match.

MU’s strategy worked pretty effectively, if you presume the objective was “hey, we’re probably not going to score against you, but you ain’t scoring, either.” It was a 0-0 match at the half, and that pair of goose eggs just kept on trucking past intermission. 50 minutes, 60 minutes, 70 minutes, 80 minutes, still scoreless. MU keeper Chloe Olson made three saves along the way to keep the Hoyas out of the net and otherwise put up a stellar outing even on balls played towards here that weren’t actual saves.

And then, in the 81st minute, Georgetown’s Emma Davis cleaned up the trash.

1-0 Georgetown on the rough soccer equivalent of the hockey strategy of “I dunno, shoot it at the net when there are lots of people over there, maybe something good will happen.” She made the play to put it in the net, so I don’t want to dismiss what Davis did here, but she more pushed the ball into the net than kicked it, and at a short range like that, Olson had almost zero chance to make a play on it.

That’s soccer, baby.

Marquette is now 3-4-1 in Big East play, and with 10 points at the conclusion of Thursday’s matches, that leaves them in a tie with Connecticut for sixth place in the league. Probably a notable time to mention that the Golden Eagles lost to UConn, 2-1, earlier this season and would thus lose a tiebreaker with the Huskies if it comes down to that. Not great.

Up Next: Marquette has another road match to wrap up that side of their schedule. That’s coming up on Sunday afternoon when the Golden Eagles visit St. John’s. First kick on FloFC is scheduled for Noon Central. The Johnnies are in a tie for third place in the league right now after going to a scoreless draw with Xavier at home last Sunday.