I am not going to smash the giant red WARNING button for the entire Marquette men’s soccer season after their first loss of the season. Nope, not gonna do it.
I am going to say that after getting outshot 21-4 by #23 Wisconsin on Monday, the Golden Eagles are getting outshot 56-29 through four matches. That works out to 14.0 against versus 7.2 for on average, and that’s bad.
That makes this Saturday a kind of notable entry in Marquette’s season as we try to figure out what the Golden Eagles are this season.
After Saturday, MU is going to play teams that were picked to finish second to last in the Summit League and last in the Ohio Valley Conference. One of two things will happen in those matches: Marquette will look much better than they have to this point of the season against opposition that they are, in theory, supposed to do that against…. or 2) Marquette’s struggles will continue, and THEN it will be time to hit the giant red WARNING button.
Why?
After that, it’s Big East play with MU’s yearly rivalry game against Milwaukee as the only other Division 1 non-conference game left to go. As of Tuesday’s brand new United Soccer Coaches poll, Marquette has two Big East opponents ranked in the top 10 and another in the top 25. That’s not a great sign for how league play is going to go for a team that just got shelled by a ranked Wisconsin squad, is it?
You see the problem here, right? I get that head coach David Korn is working a bunch of newcomers into his roster and rotation this season…. but it’s Year Three for him after two Not Great campaigns. At least statistically speaking, it’s starting to get very late in the year very early for Korn, unless we see something change in a hurry. A good time to get that change started? Saturday afternoon in the Valley.
Match #5: vs Northwestern Wildcats (2-1-1)
Date: Saturday, September 5, 2026
Time: 1pm Central
Location: Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Marquette is 17-6-1 all time against Northwestern. The series goes all the way back to 1964, Marquette’s first ever year with a team. The two sides met regularly throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but once we hit the 21st Century, that came to an end. That’s too bad, because Marquette was on a nine match winning streak at the time. Since then, the two teams have met three times, with one being a 1-0 Northwestern victory in the 2012 NCAA tournament at Valley Fields. The most recent contest was a 1-0 NU victory back in 2024 when the Wildcats were ranked #9 in the country.
Seeing as Marquette is coming off a match against Wisconsin that went incredibly poorly for the Golden Eagles, I think it’s important to present Northwestern in context with their Big Ten conference rival. To that end: Northwestern was picked to finish eighth in the league this season by vote of the Big Ten’s coaches…. one spot ahead of Wisconsin.
Northwestern had gotten off to an unbeaten start through their first three matches, only taking a draw after pulling even with Notre Dame in the 75th minute on the road in South Bend. The Wildcats pounced on New Haven with a goal less than 17 minutes into the season opener and ultimately won 3-1 there, and they rebounded from giving up a 23rd minute goal to Evansville by scoring twice, late in each half, to win 2-1.
Things derailed in a bad way against Xavier last time out, as they gave up goals in the 5th and 27th minutes to trail 2-0 at the half before giving up a third just 126 seconds into the second half. NU clawed one back on a penalty kick in the 54th and got another goal in the 81st, but Gabriel Smyth took a straight red card just seven seconds after the restart. For some extra fun, assistant coach Joe Moulden was thrown out of the game about 90 seconds later as well, apparently for dissenting about a foul that led to a yellow card against Xavier, given that they’re timestamped the same in the box score. That means Smyth is out for this match against Marquette, and I presume Moulden is as well? I’m not sure how the coaching card rules work.
Smyth has started all four matches of the season for Northwestern to this point, so that’s a fairly important deal right there. The junior midfielder from Alberta is a transfer from St. John’s, where he started 15 of 17 appearances a year ago. That doesn’t mean he would have been helpful against Marquette, as the Golden Eagles didn’t see the Red Storm last season due to divisional play. With that said, Smyth is tied for the second most shots on the season so far, even if he’s only tallied one assist in terms of points.
No one on the NU roster has really been stacking up the points yet, as no one has a second goal this fall. Tre Barrett and Bryant Mayer are tied for the team lead in points, thanks to a goal and two assists each. The assists there are tied with Marco Silva for the team lead in that column. Peter Reisz is Northwestern’s shots leader, racking up 13 already to this point of the year. That’s a lot to keep an eye on for Marquette’s defense.
Dominic Pereira has played all 90 minutes in net in three of NU’s four games so far this season, so he’s the likely pick for the starting keeper here. He’s stopping just over 72% of shots on goal, but through luck of the draw and small sample size this season, he’s allowing 1.67 goals per 90 minutes on average. Gino Cervoni did play the entirety of the Notre Dame match, so I suppose it’s not impossible that we’ll see the Hofstra transfer instead.
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