Let’s say the good news out loud: The last time that Marquette women’s soccer — currently 4-2-0 on the year — had four wins on September 1st was 2011. Yes, some of that is purely luck of the calendar. It’s hard to win four times in August when you only play three matches like MU did in 2019. BUT ALSO Marquette started out that season with three straight losses. Marquette hasn’t been 4-2-0 or better to start a normal fall season since a season opening loss to Stanford in 2017 turned into a 7-1-1 start.
You can debate strength of schedule or whatever if you want, but the fact of the matter is that Marquette is already two-thirds of the way to matching their win total from Chris Allen’s first season in charge and they’re only about to play their first match in the month of September. That’s not nothing. In 2024, MU didn’t get to Win #4 until October 3rd. One step at a time.
So far this season, Marquette is outshooting teams 14.2 to 10.8 on average. That’s much different than how things went last year, so that’s great to see. That shot advantage has MU going into Match #7 of the year averaging just over one more goal per match than they were scoring last year. “Ball goes in the net” was a struggle for the Golden Eagles last season, and the offense has generally speaking been much more together than what we saw in 2024.
Goals against are down, even if Marquette is still averaging a bit over 1.1 goals per match to this point of the year. Hailey Wade is having a little bit of trouble in terms of save percentage relative to what the combination of Elise Krone and Chloe Olson did last year, although I suspect that letting in four on 14 Minnesota shots last Thursday is doing a bit of stat inflation for Wade right now.
Why am I spending so much time talking about the good progress from Allen’s squad this season? Y’all saw that #5 in the title here. You see what’s about to happen. Get through Thursday with a win and then MU can just chalk whatever happens on Sunday up to a learning experience as Big East play inches closer.
Match #7: at Kansas City Roos (3-3-0)
Date: Thursday, September 4, 2025
Time: 7pm Central
Location: Durwood Soccer Stadium, Kansas City, Missouri
Streaming: Summit League Network, which will cost you $10 for a month’s worth of access, unless you paid to watch the St. Thomas match, in which case, you’re set to go!
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWSOC
Marquette is 0-0-1 all time against Kansas City. The series started last year when Kate Gibson scored with 12 seconds left to secure the 1-1 draw in Milwaukee.
Kansas City comes into Thursday’s contest after a 3-2 loss to Tulsa snapped a three match winning streak. The Roos found themselves up 2-1 at halftime with a goal just seconds before intermission, and they held that lead for almost the entire second half. They let in goals less than a minute apart to suddenly trail 3-2 with 1:19 remaining and then didn’t even manage a shot to have a prayer of tying it back up. That’s a rough way to go through things, even if KC was picked to finish last in the Summit League this season after going 1-7-0 in conference play a year ago.
The Roos have a pair of double digit point scorers already this season in Delfina Zolesio Fernandez Blanco and Ashley Koch. Zolesio has six goals and an assist to lead the team in goals as well as in points with 13. The 2024 NAIA All-American has scored all six of those goals in Kansas City’s last three matches, including a hat trick in a 7-0 win over Rockhurst. Koch has four goals and two assists for 10 points at the moment, and she’s scored precisely one goal in each of KC’s last four contests. Those two women are the only Roos averaging more than a shot per game so far this season at 16 and 13 respectively, so if the Golden Eagles can mark them properly, that’s going to be a big step towards winning.
Audrey Brown has started all six matches in net for Kansas City, but she’s only finished three of them. She was pulled after 70 minutes and letting in every goal in a 4-0 season opening loss to Saint Louis and got subbed out very late against Creighton, too. That one’s very weird, as the Roos conceded a 90th minute penalty kick 17 seconds later and lost 2-1. There was a VAR review shortly before that PK, so perhaps Brown was banged up as a result? Anyway, the other match she missed time in was when she left after 30 minutes against Rockhurst and KC was already up 2-0 on their way to a 7-0 win. The end result of all of this is Brown has a not-so-hot goals against average of 1.76 per 90 minutes and she’s only stopping 64% of shots on goal. Kansas City’s pretty even on shots on the season (although 29-5 vs Rockhurst is tilting that), so if MU is patient, they should be able to find seams to beat Brown.
Match #8: vs #5 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (4-0-1)
Date: Sunday, September 7, 2025
Time: 1pm Central
Location: Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: Marquette Athletics on YouTube. Yeah, it’s free!
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWSOC
Marquette is 5-10-1 all time against Notre Dame. The two teams have a long stretch of matches when both were in the Big East, but the series does date all the way back to 1988 when MU opened up the series with a 3-1-1 record in the first five meetings up through 2005. Since then, as you can see, it’s been mostly all Irish, with Marquette’s last win coming in the 2012 Big East tournament. The series started back up as a non-conference match in 2021, and the Golden Eagles have yet to score a goal in three tries, including last year’s 5-0 loss in South Bend.
Notre Dame is outscoring teams 19-3 this season. They go into Thursday’s road contest against Michigan State with a three match shutout streak.
Notre Dame is outshooting teams 97-35 overall this season. That’s 19.4 to 7.0 per match.
Notre Dame’s shots on goal differential is 49-16.
Notre Dame has 17 assists on the year, and haven’t given up a single assisted goal.
10 different Irish players have scored a goal this season, led by six from Izzy Engle. 15 different women have at least one point on the stat sheet.
Sonoma Kasica had played every minute this season in net up until Notre Dame was up 3-0 on Oakland at halftime in their most recent match. ND switched out keepers at the break because they were outshooting the Golden Grizzlies 21-0, so up until that point, Kasica had a save percentage of .800 and a goals-against average of 0.67.
No, I am not picking Marquette to win this match.
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