It’s been 180 minutes of the 2025 season for Marquette men’s soccer and two things are true.
- We haven’t really seen the team that head coach David Korn wants to put on the field.
- Marquette nearly went 0-1-1 to start the season and 0-2-0 probably wasn’t that far off.
We got about 11 minutes of the team that Korn wants to put on the field to start the year, right up until team captain Justin Milovanov had a yellow card for a straight on tackle upgraded to a red card after video review showed that he made spike contact with the Bradley player in the mid-calf area. Thus: Marquette played the rest of the season opening 0-0 draw with Bradley with just 10 men, and fighting to a scoreless
draw for 79 minutes while the Braves outshot Marquette 11-6 isn’t the worst result.
It is, however, a more concerning result after Marquette went into the 84th minute against North Florida on Sunday heavily outshooting the Ospreys but sitting on a scoreless tie at the time. Sure, no Milovanov because he was suspended by rule due to the red card, but MU was playing with a full deck of 11 men on the field. Were it not for two incredibly poorly timed fouls by UNF in the final six minutes and two ensuing wonder strikes by Mateo Stoka, Marquette ends up with a 1-0 loss instead of a 2-1 win.
Unfortunate to have to settle for a scoreless draw. Lucky to score at all in a 2-1 win.
That’s not the start you want to have to a season.
But again: No Milovanov.
But also: Marquette struggled to score goals at all last season with penalty kicks doing a lot of heavy lifting on MU’s overall goal total. “Hey, that’s gotta change” is a thing that you could say about Marquette going into this fall, and through 180 minutes, it hasn’t.
Two more matches, two chances to get the proper team on the field, two chances to get the offense chugging this year, one very specific opportunity to really pile on the goals. It’ll make sense in a second.
Match #3: vs Drake Bulldogs (1-0-0)
Date: Thursday, August 28, 2025
Time: 7pm Central
Location: Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteSoccer
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 9-2-1 all time against Drake. The tie came in the first meeting back in 1988, and it was a scoreless draw at that. Marquette won the next five, including keeping Drake scoreless until the fourth meeting. The two losses in the series came back-to-back in 2007 and 2009, and MU has won four straight since then. The first three of that run were in 2012, 2013, and 2014, but the series started back up in 2023 in Milwaukee with a 3-2 Marquette win.
Drake had a bit of an adventure to start their 2025 season. They were out on the road in Texas for the opening weekend of the campaign, and their scheduled opener against Houston Christian was washed out by bad weather in the Houston area. After dealing with that — they didn’t tweet that the game was postponed until nearly 9pm Central time — the Bulldogs had to kill time until Sunday’s contest against Incarnate Word over in San Antonio. That got off to a hot start with Drake going up 2-0 in the first 29 minutes, but it certainly looks like Drake went into a bunker in the second half as UIW outshot them 6-1 and broke through with a goal in the 76th minute. I presume that Incarnate Word’s corner kick in the 89th minute was a little bit nervewracking.
Seeing as Drake’s the favorite to win the Missouri Valley this season — although their 56 points aren’t that far in front of Bowling Green at 54 and Western Michigan at 51 — that couldn’t have been precisely how they wanted their first match of the season to go. That’s without addressing the fact that Incarnate Word was picked to finish fifth in the Ohio Valley Conference, too.
Eskil Gjerde and Barrett Kitts are the two men who scored for Drake in the opener, although Crew Alvarez led the team in shots in the match with three. Damian Segura returns to the roster after leading the Bulldogs in points last year with 11 on five goals and an assist in just eight appearances. He played just 26 minutes against UIW, which is interesting. All told, Drake returns their top six scorers from last season, which is a pretty good way to go about things.
Tomas Butkovic got the call in net to start the season. No surprise there, as he played every single minute as a freshman in 2024. He finished last season with a goals-against average of 1.06 and a save percentage of just .695, which is notable since he let in one of the three shots on goal he faced against Incarnate Word.
Match #4: vs Chicago State Cougars (0-2-0)
Date: Sunday, August 31, 2025
Time: 1pm Central
Location: Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteSoccer
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
This is the first ever meeting between Marquette and Chicago State.
Part of the reason this is the first ever meeting between the two teams given their proximity is that Chicago State didn’t have a men’s soccer team playing a full Division 1 schedule until the fall of 2021. I mean, okay, yes, they had a team in the late 1980s, but you get the point. The other part of it is that, with all due respect, Chicago State has not been a good soccer team. You’d expect that from a start up program, so that’s not surprising. In their four full seasons of competition, Chicago State has gone 11-47-11, and last year, with a record of 3-11-1, the Cougars were outscored 40-16. Believe it or not, Chicago State was not picked to finish last in the NEC this season. They ended up ninth in the 10 team preseason poll, so shouts to Central Connecticut State, I guess.
Things are not immediately better for Chicago State here in 2025 after starting off the season with a 7-0 loss to Lindenwood and a 4-0 loss to St. Thomas. They’ll tangle with DePaul on Thursday before coming up to Milwaukee, but the odds are clearly not with them, y’know? CSU has only attempted 13 shots through two matches this season, and Zephyn Brockert-Kress leads the team with three attempts. Hilary Odhiambo is Chicago State’s leading returning scorer after putting up two goals and two assists last year, but he’s yet to play this season.
Here’s a giant red flag for Chicago State’s season for you: Bryant Garcia has played every single minute in net for the Cougars so far. 11 goals allowed, 11 saves made, goals-against average of 5.50 per 90 minutes, save percentage of .500. The 5’10” junior from Colorado is one of three keepers on the roster for CSU, so the fact that head coach Norris Howze is sticking with Garcia is not a ringing endorsement of the other two guys.
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