#1 — Is there another record setting offensive season coming from someone on this roster?
When the sun rose on the 2017 season, Marquette’s single season points record was 46, set back in 2015 by Claire Costanza. Julianna Shearer became the first MU player to ever put up 50 in a season that
year, and she got to 60 by the end of the season. One year later, Grace Gabriel and Riley Hill both got to 67, and Gabriel would follow that campaign up with a 65 in 2019. Mary Schumar matched that record in 2022, then beat it with 89 in 2023. Meg Bireley didn’t quite get that far down the road in points the past two years, reaching 76 in 2024 and 79 in 2025, but she did become the first Marquette player to ever score 60 goals in a season when she finished 2024 with 69, then she became the first player to ever score 60 in two seasons when she had 63 last year.
Five of the seven highest point totals in program history have been in the past four seasons, and seven of the 10 best, too. Seven of the 10 best goal totals in program history have been in the past three seasons, including three of the four best. Two of the three best assist totals in program history have come in the past four years. From a team perspective, Marquette has posted the four best points per game averages in program history in the past six years, and the same goes for goals per game, and it’s been four of the five best assist per game averages in the same timeframe.
What’s next? Does Tess Osburn jump forward from her 64 point season last year since Meg Bireley’s eligibility is over? Does Hanna Bodner take up more of an offensive role this year and put up a big number? Is someone going to break out as the next big offensive star for the Golden Eagles? Perhaps Dani Serrano or Ella Mautz, since they had five and four points respectively in the exhibition against University of Chicago? Or is head coach Meredith Black going to have to figure out a way to win games with a slightly subdued offensive output?
#2 — What’s going on with the defense, perhaps at goalie in particular?
I don’t think we can draw any big conclusions from Marquette allowing five goals on 13 shots against University of Chicago in their exhibition game, especially not with three of the goals coming after Marquette was up 22-2 at the end of three quarters. However, there are two roster things to note from the live stats in that game. There’s no Lauren Grady and there’s no Mary Velner. Grady contributed on both ends out of the midfield last year, putting up 17 goals, 14 assists, 20 ground balls, 14 caused turnovers, and 28 draw controls. Velner joined Grady on the preseason all-Big East team after starting on defense in all 16 games last season. She was second on the team amongst field players in ground balls and second overall in caused turnovers, both behind returning Big East Midfielder of the Year Hanna Bodner.
Marquette’s defense was not great last season, as evidenced by the fact that the Golden Eagles scored just 10 more goals than they allowed for the entirety of the season. In Big East play, that margin was just +1, 82 for and 81 against. In MU’s three games that determined whether or not they were going to be in the Big East tournament, they ended up -7 in goal differential, all because of a 15-8 loss to Villanova paired with a one goal win over UConn and a one goal loss to Georgetown. If Grady and Velner are out long term and not just sitting out an exhibition for precautionary reasons, that’s bad news for Marquette, as part of the reason why they’re preseason all-Big East honorees is because of their contributions on defense.
As for the goalie position, we can see that Mikayla Yang started the game in net for Marquette. She subbed out at the start of the second quarter with Marquette up 13-1 and having stopped one of Chicago’s two shots on goal. Freshman Jillian Howell played the entire second quarter, getting a save on a free position shot with under a minute to go in the half to blank the Maroons in the frame. Yang went back out to start the third quarter, made one save and allowed Chicago’s second goal of the game, and then was immediately relieved by Howell…. at the seven minute mark of the third, so maybe there was a plan to split the quarter anyway. Howell finished the period without facing a shot, and then Zoey Gottlieb finished the game, playing the entire fourth quarter and conceding three goals on six shots while making one save.
My take away here is that Yang has the edge as the starter since she’s the one with in-game collegiate experience, but gave up two goals on four shots on goal, while Howell was nearly not tested at all in her 22 minutes of action and Gottlieb seems to have struggled while the very deep end of Marquette’s bench played defense in front of her. Yang has not proven that she deserves to be the goalie free and clear based on her first two seasons of lacrosse, so there’s space for Howell to overtake her by the time we get to Friday afternoon….. but I’m not 100% convinced that’s an obvious choice to make for Meredith Black right now.
#3 — Can Marquette outperform their Big East preseason poll projection?
To review: Marquette went 10-6 last season with a 3-3 mark in Big East contests, and they were two goals one way or another away from turning a 14-13 loss to Georgetown in the regular season finale into a win that put them into the conference tournament. Going into 2026, even with four women on the preseason all-Big East team, the league’s coaches picked Marquette to finish fifth once again this year. There’s also a notable drop in points from fourth place Georgetown with 24 to Marquette with 16.
If you go entirely by “number of players on the preseason all-conference team,” Marquette’s placement doesn’t hold water. UConn has just two women on the list, and Georgetown has three. Villanova has four, just like Marquette, and three of their four were unanimous picks, just like both of UConn’s picks. If you want to argue about how much all of that means, that’s fine, but it would seem like even the coaches think that Marquette has more of the best players in the league than some of the competitors around the conference.
In theory, that should mean Marquette has a crack at doing better than fifth place. Heck, they were maybe a couple lucky bounces away from doing that against Georgetown last year. They were also maybe a couple of lucky bounces away from losing to UConn, since that one was decided by one goal as well, so maybe not. There’s also the issue that we talked about just a moment ago that we’re not 100% sure that Marquette’s on track to be better on defense this year. If you wanted to take a pessimist’s view, then there’s questions about whether or not Marquette is going to have the scorers to power past whatever defensive issues they might have.
Is the answer here just a big ol’ “maybe?” Seems like it, at least until we see what Marquette looks like across the first three games of the season against Eastern Michigan, Cincinnati, and Central Michigan.
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