Let’s be clear about this: Things could have gone a lot worse.
Marquette men’s lacrosse didn’t even have possession of the ball until #7 Notre Dame went up 2-0 on their second shot of Saturday afternoon’s game, which means the the Fighting Irish scored on their first two shots of their season, and the second shot of the year came from their faceoff man, Aidan Diaz-Matos. This could have snowballed pretty quickly on the Golden Eagles, especially after Notre Dame went up 3-0 less than five minutes in.
But goals from Ethan Salvia and Tucker Mullen made it 3-2 heading to the second quarter, and Mullen’s goal with 11:28 left before halftime evened the game up at three each. With 3:52 left before the break, it seemed like things were on the verge of falling apart as Luke Miller made it 8-4 Notre Dame…. but there’s Beau Westphal and Carsen Brandt scoring before halftime, and 8-6 at the break against the #7 team in the country is a different animal.
That makes it a lot easier to get to 8-8 with 10:17 left in the third and make it anyone’s ball game, and that’s what Brandt did.
Now, if only Marquette had closed out the third quarter well. It was 10-9 Notre Dame after a Nolan Rappis goal with 4:03 left. Then the Irish stuck two past MU goalie Lucas Lawas in the final minute, so now it was 12-9 with 15 minutes left. That’s less fun than 10-9, but lacrosse is a weird sport sometimes and if you can make the right plays at the right time, you can put a run together.
Unfortunately for Marquette, Notre Dame put the run together. Those two at the end of the third turned into a 6-1 Irish run that went alllll the way down to the final two minutes of the game. 16-10 before Westphal got one last one for the Golden Eagles.
It’s not a bad loss, not to a top 10 team. If you wanted to be encouraged about how Marquette handled their business for the first 41 minutes, that’s pretty fair. But you have to play all 60 to beat a ranked team, and Marquette didn’t have that in the cards in this one.
Carsen Brandt and Tucker Mullen both put up four points for Marquette, with Brandt getting there on a hat trick and an assist, while Mullen had two of each. Beau Westphal matched Brandt in goals for a hat trick to round out the list of multi-goal Golden Eagles here. Brady Nicholas led the field players with three ground balls, and Chandler Caster had a nice day on draws, winning 12 of 21.
Highlights, such as they are, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and ESPN+:
Up Next: After an 0-2 start against two ranked opponents, things open up for Marquette a bit here. They won’t return to the Valley until March, but for now, the chances of getting the first win of the season soon look pretty solid. Next Saturday brings the first road trip of the year as MU visits Cleveland State for an 11am first draw. I’m guessing that’ll be an ESPN+ broadcast, but we’ll have to wait and see, I guess. The Vikings dropped to 0-3 on the year with a 10-7 loss at Bellarmine on Valentine’s Day. They also have a 20-1 loss at Denver in their opener, so that presents an interesting measuring stick for MU relative to Big East action.
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