That 2026 season opener against #20 Michigan just keeps getting closer and closer for YOUR Marquette men’s lacrosse team. With that in mind, it’s probably a good idea if we take a look at the roster that head coach Jake Richard has for his second season in charge. First up: The returning guys from last year’s roster. We’ll look at the newcomers — there are some transfers in there alongside some freshmen — in a future installment, but for now, we’ll start with the returning attackmen. From there,
midfielders, long stick midfielders, defensemen, faceoff specialists, and finally the goalie corps.
We’ve got A LOT of guys to talk about, and as we go along, we’ll note the seniors that departed leaving spaces on the roster. Let’s get right to it!
ATTACK
I’m not stepping out of bounds to suggest that Marquette needs their returning attackers to step up in a big way this season if for no other reason that they don’t have Bobby O’Grady to fall back on any more. He finished up his career last season with 28 more points than anyone else in program history, mostly by way of 43 more goals than anyone else in program history. O’Grady tied for the team lead in points last season with 47 which itself is tied for the seventh best points season in program history. O’Grady was also Marquette’s top shot-taker last year, finishing up with nearly eight per game and 20 more in total than the next guy.
The good news is that O’Grady didn’t lead the team in goals last season. That honor went to Nolan Rappis, who does return for 2026, perhaps because of a medical redshirt thanks to two injury-stunted first two seasons at Marquette. Rappis matched O’Grady for that 7th best points season with 47, finding the net 32 times and assisting on 15 more goals. That gives Rappis the 6th best goal scoring season in MU history and he just barely missed cracking the top 10 for assists in a season, too.
Rappis will be backed up by Carsen Brandt and Matt Caputo on the offensive end of things. Both men started all 14 games a year ago, just as Rappis did, although I believe technically Caputo did so from the midfield last year. In any case, Brandt has the slight edge in scoring, 22 goals to 21 for Caputo, and in assists, too, 12-10. Brandt is the guy who finished 20 shots behind O’Grady, so we could expect him to do a teeny bit more if he’s going to take that many shots. Of course, this means that Rappis was a much more efficient scorer, needing just 69 shots to get to 32 goals. Perhaps Richard and offensive coordinator Andrew Smistad just need to funnel more shots to Rappis to get his scoring numbers jumping.
It’s good news that Marquette is pretty much set with their three starting attackers. It’s bad news that there’s essentially zero depth behind them with experience scoring Division 1 goals. Andrew Bowman played in all 14 games last season, but finished with just two goals and four assists on 17 shots. We’re a long way off from his 11 goals as a freshman in 2023, but maybe he can get in the mix and do some things for Marquette here. Jacob Nottoli is a senior this year, but he’s played in just 11 games up til now. Easton McCafferty and Michael Maloney were freshmen last season and saw action in three and two games respectively. Matt Hamill was in the same recruiting class but sat out last year. So, there’s guys, but no one you’re trusting to go get you a goal on anything resembling a regular basis at the moment.
MIDFIELD
There’s a big opportunity for someone to step up here, as Marquette no longer has Will Foster in the midfield. He is #3 on Marquette’s all-time assists list and one of just seven men to ever tally 100 points for the Golden Eagles. Foster led the Golden Eagles with 19 assists last season, which is the fourth best campaign in team history. These points are going to have to come from somewhere, and as mentioned a moment ago, there aren’t a lot of “oh, well, he’ll jump forward” options in the attackers. I mentioned earlier that I believe Matt Caputo was officially a midfielder last year, so if he’s shifting to attack as he’s listed on the roster right now, that thins things out here a bit more, too.
Marquette does have two immediately obvious options for scoring midfielders. One is Beau Westphal, who appeared in all 14 games last season and had nine goals and an assist. The other is Jake Bair, who appeared in just eight games last season, but still managed to throw together five goals and four assists. Bair didn’t even get on the field for Marquette until mid-March last season, and his two goals and an assist in the Big East tournament was one of the few bright spots as MU lost 19-8 to Georgetown.
I’m curious about seeing more from Hayden Hiltz in 2026. He didn’t make his freshman debut until March 4th last season, but in eight games played, Hiltz put up five points on two goals and three assists. He also hauled in 11 ground balls, and you can definitely do worse than averaging nearly 1.5 per game. I want to circle back to his goals for a second. Hiltz took two shots last season and scored them both. I’m not saying that he’s going to stay perfect forever, and his own team bio says that he was playing short stick defensive midfielder last year. But also maybe run some transition opportunities for him or something? What can we do with this guy if he’s got The Touch?
From there we move along to guys who clearly have some kind of role on this team, aka non-scoring midfielders who still had lots of playing time. The leader of the pack there is Peter Detwiler, who is not just MU’s captain this season, but a preseason all-Big East honoree because of his short stick defensive midfielder work a year ago. He is Marquette’s top returning ground ball guy (excluding faceoff specialists) with 37 last year, and Detwiler even added three goals to the year. He’s also tied for the third most caused turnovers amongst returning players, so clearly he’s going to be doing a lot of work for MU in 2026.
The same goes for Jadyn Castillo, but it’s a lot harder to pin down exactly what his role is. Castillo played in all 14 games last year, so clearly the coaching staff wants to see him out there. He just doesn’t have anything in terms of stats to back that up, topping out at nine ground balls on the year. Connor Schoenwetter might fit that bill as well, as he played in 10 games as a freshman last season but didn’t do much statistically. If that’s just because Castillo and Schoenwetter are short stick defenders and that role is just kind of lacking in glory moments, then I’m all here for them playing their part again.
Marquette has a big pile of junior midfielders who just haven’t broken through to a notable regular role. The group of Zach Hulme, Kaiden Kohls, Andrew Kohlbrenner, and Jack Schoenwetter are all going into their third year in the program after playing in somewhere between six and three games last season. Ethan Salvia fits into that junior group as well, but he hasn’t made it onto the field at all yet as a Golden Eagle. There’s also Brol Scherman, who was a freshman last year and attempted three shots in his four games of action. Nothing about any of these guys in terms of stats stands out from last season, so we’ll see if they pop out with more experience in the program.
LONG STICK MIDFIELDERS
I’d be curious to hear Jake Richard’s thoughts about LSMs just because he 1) was a short stick defensive mid himself and 2) has all of his LSMs listed as Long Stick Midfielder/Defense on the roster. Is this a situation where they’re all essentially interchangeable in terms of responsibilities the way that Richard wants things set up or is it something else?
Anyway, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to see a couple of these guys ending up starting on defense as things get going in February. Part of that is because of the lack of starts amongst the defenders (we’ll get there) but it’s also because Brady Nicholas and Jackson Nichols started eight and six times respectively last year. Perhaps because of the extra starting assignments, Nicholas has the stats edge on Nichols as he’s second behind Peter Detwiler in ground balls amongst non-specialists and he’s second on the team amongst returning guys in caused turnovers, too. It’s not like Nichols is a slacker, as he’s tied for third with Detwiler in the caused turnover column in the returning group.
If Marquette was limited to just those guys as regular rotation players in the LSM group, that wouldn’t be too bad. They’re not, though, as Brenden Boyle and Bradley Johnson appeared in all 14 games last season, too. Both of these guys managed to sneak in an assist to the 2025 campaign, which I’m guessing both came by way of transition opportunities for the Golden Eagles. You can do worse than having reliable defenders that can get the ball moving to shooters on the attack up ahead, that’s for certain.
Poor Colin Sim, who was stuck behind all of these guys in the LSM group. He played in two games as a sophomore last season and recorded his first career ground ball in Marquette’s 16-6 win over Detroit Mercy. Maybe if guys get shifted to defense, that opens up a role as a midfielder for him? If nothing else, David Lamarca’s job is open now after he was playing LSM and finished his career at #6 all time in caused turnovers and #8 in ground balls. We’ll see.
DEFENSE
Mike Piraino is Marquette’s only reliable returning defender from last season, or at the very least defender-exclusive player in terms of what the roster page says. He started all 14 games in front of the net and is Marquette’s top returning caused turnover guy with eight last season. We’ll just presume his name is penciled in to start once again on opening day.
That means someone has to replace Ryan Kilcoyne in close defense after he led the Golden Eagles in caused turnovers last season. The most likely name there is Calvin Hicks, who played in played in 11 games as a junior last season. After Hicks, things start getting a little sparse, but that’s not terribly surprising since the defensive job does quite literally involve standing around waiting for the ball to come back your way for about half the game. Not a whole lot of reason to be substituting all that much, and perhaps that’s why Jack Casey only appeared in five games last year and PJ McColgan only got into one contest. There’s also Colin Maloney and Luke Montanye, both of whom were freshmen last year and ended up not playing.
FACEOFF
Marquette won 54% of their faceoffs last season, which was third best in the Big East and #25 in the country last season. (Remember, there was only 74 men’s lacrosse teams, though.) Anytime you’re in the positive in that department, winning more than you lose, ultimately being able to have the ability to answer a goal against or tack on a second one after you scored, you’re holding an advantage.
The Golden Eagles have a particularly useful advantage here, because MU returns all of their draw attempts from last season. Adam Slager led Marquette in attempts with 213, and he won over 54% of his draws. Chandler Caster was in the positive as well, winning over 59% of his 91 faceoffs. Ty Ambush ended up in third in attempts with just 85, and he ends up third in success rate at 47%. That’s not bad, it’s just not up to the regular rates for the other two guys, and it’s important to have multiple options you’re comfortable with because styles make fights, and sometimes it’s useful to have someone who brings something different to the draw.
GOALIE
Unless something notable changes, I presume we’ll see a lot of Lucas Lawas in net again this year for Marquette. He was the primary goalie a year ago, starting all 14 matches and logging over 805 of the 851 minutes in the season. No, his 12.52 goals against average and .473 save percentage were not particularly great. But if Jake Richard wanted Jack Kask in net, he would have given him more than 41 minutes last season. Yes, there’s freshmen on the roster who could, in theory, take the job from Lawas, but until we see Richard pull the trigger, Marquette’s going to need either A) a little bit better goalie play from Lawas or B) a little bit better field defense from the guys in front of Lawas to make his life a little bit easier.
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