2026 Big East Women’s Lacrosse Tournament
Semifinals
#1 Denver Pioneers (13-3, 6-0 Big East) vs #4 Marquette Golden Eagles (9-6, 3-3 Big East)
Date: Thursday, April 30, 2026
Time: 5pm Central
Location: Peter Barton Stadium, Denver, Colorado
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Season Series:
Denver won, 15-9All-Time Series: Denver leads, 11-0
At a glance, this seems like not an ideal way for Marquette to head into the Big East tournament. The Golden Eagles cost themselves the #3 seed in the field with their regular season finale loss to UConn last weekend, they’ve never beaten Denver in program history, Denver went 6-0 in Big East play
this season, the Pioneers are 42-1 in their last 43 regular season Big East games and 53-2 against Big East opponents in the past six seasons that had conference play, Denver is ranked #17 in the country right now, two spots higher than they were when Marquette lost 15-9 to the Pios in Colorado earlier this season.
And so on. You get it.
HOWEVER.
Here’s the final margin for Denver in five of their six Big East games this season.
11, 12, 9, 18, 6
That six is from their regular season finale, an 11-5 victory over Georgetown where the winner earned the regular season title and the #1 seed in the conference tournament.
Marquette? Also 6, falling 15-9 back on April Fool’s Day.
Marquette was only down four when the fourth quarter of that game started, and an Isabelle Casucci goal at the 11:58 mark got the Golden Eagles back to that point. Shots in that game ended up relatively even. Turnovers were dead even. Ground balls were mostly even. Who knows what happens if Marquette doesn’t go 0-for-2 on their only free position attempts of the game, both of which came in the first quarter?
Until Georgetown was within four goals with four minutes left and the Pioneers tacked on two goals in the final minute to end up with a six goal win, Marquette had provided the toughest test for Denver in the regular season. Maybe it’s a little bit silly to try and think that the Golden Eagles have a chance to down the #17 team in the country playing at home. Yes, it’s obviously going to take Marquette’s best wire-to-wire performance of the season to pull this victory off and advance to Saturday’s title game.
But it’s not somewhat impossible, like it might have been in the years where Denver was beating Marquette by double digits in the regular season meeting. If Marquette can win the chess game of defending Olivia Ripple (4 goals and an assist) better, or find a way to slow down Eva Thomsen-Marr (4 goals, two assists), they’ve got a chance. If the Golden Eagles get a big game from anyone either end of the field, but especially one of their secondary scorers, that’s going to give them a chance. Expecting Tess Osburn, Hanna Bodner, and Dani Serrano to do better than their regular season outings (5 points for Osburn, 3 each for Bodner and Serrano) is a little too much to hope for, but what if Isabelle Casucci throws together a hat trick and an assist or something like that? That starts opening up the field for everyone else. And yes: Marquette will need much better goaltending. 11 allowed and two saves for Jillian Howell in 30 minutes? 4 allowed and three saves for Mikayla Yang the rest of the way? Obviously not good enough to beat a ranked opponent. But get those numbers to 50/50 as a team? Maybe, just maybe…
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