We hit another signpost on the way to the start of the 2026 college lacrosse season on Monday when Inside Lacrosse released the preseason edition of the KANE media top 20 poll. While 2025 ended on an upswing
for Marquette, wrapping up the regular season at 7-6 and beating Denver in the regular season for the first time in program history, there’s no shock to the system that the Golden Eagles are not in the preseason top 20 here, nor are they even earning votes. That’s fine.
However, the schedule that head coach Jake Richard has assembled for 2026 is going to give his team plenty of opportunities to explain to the voters that they belong in the rankings. There are four teams in the top 20 on Marquette’s schedule this year, and three more teams that earned votes in the preseason poll.
In fact, the Golden Eagles will have to come out of the gate against two of the ranked teams, and I guess the good news is that both contests will be at Valley Fields. Game #1 is on February 7th against #20 Michigan, and Game #2 is seven days later against #8 Notre Dame. 1-1 to start the year will be a fantastic beginning for MU, especially since the program has never beaten the Fighting Irish in 13 tries.
The third and final preseason ranked team in non-conference play spools up on February 28th — yes, ranked teams on three of the first four Saturdays of the season — when Marquette heads out to Long Island for a game against #13 Harvard. MU’s last notable test of non-conference play comes on in the middle of the week on Wednesday, March 11th, in a home game against Utah. The Utes are the unofficial #29 team in the country heading into the season, so perhaps that’s a fourth ranked team by the time we get to that one.
Marquette’s Big East schedule unfolds in an interesting way relative to the preseason top 20 poll as well as the Big East preseason poll, too. MU gets the two teams picked behind the Golden Eagles in the league poll to start off, one home and one away, then gets the only national preseason top five team on their slate. That’s Georgetown, and Marquette will go to Washington to face the Hoyas on April 11th. After that, the season wraps up with the two Big East teams that are earning preseason top 20 votes. That’s home against Villanova on April 18th and then at Denver six days later.
As you can tell from the math here, if Jake Richard and the guys want to finish over .500 this season, it’s going to take clipping one of the teams that’s earning preseason top 20 votes. Marquette has just six games against teams not earning any national attention in the poll, so those are clearly must-win type games in terms of wrapping up the year in a positive manner.
You can check out the entire preseason top 20 right here.
