Back on November 6th, Marquette men’s soccer lost their last match of Big East play, falling 2-0 to #5 ranked Akron. They needed to beat the Zips to get into the conference tournament, and after getting outshot 14-7 and giving up two first half goals, that did not happen. That left Marquette at 10-6-1 overall but just 9-6-1 against Division 1 opponents, and 3-5-0 in Big East action.
Going into that game, Marquette had an RPI ranking of #41. The loss dropped them to #44. As I write this on November
12th, through all matches played on November 11th, they are #47.
The NCAA tournament for men’s soccer is a 48 team event. 23 conference champions get automatic bids, 25 get at-large bids. I count 11 conference leaders in RPI in front of Marquette in the rankings on Thursday morning. 11 plus 25 = 36. I feel like when I saw Marquette was in the 40s going into the regular season finale and then lost and dropped further away from #40 that I was pretty on target that the Golden Eagles are not a candidate for at-large selection. If nothing else, the vibes on this team this season — we’ll get to it — have not been that of a team that’s on the very edge of playing their way into the tournament.
And yet I seem to get the impression that someone in the Marquette office thinks that David Korn’s team still has reasons for hope.
There’s nothing in the official Akron recap that says the season is over. In fact, one of the bullet points under Notables for that match is this:
The Golden Eagles finished the regular season with 10 victories, their first double-digit win campaign since 2013.
“Finished the regular season” is not “the season is over.” And this is the next bullet point:
Five of Marquette’s six defeats were to teams ranked in the Top 25, with three of those teams sitting inside the Top 10 at the time of playing them.
That, uh, that certainly seems to be indicating that the season is not over and is actually campaigning for inclusion in the NCAA event because Marquette has good losses.
I didn’t really think that much of it at the time, because that can just be read as “sending the team off on a high note after losing.” Hey, played a tough schedule and came up short, okay, see you next August everyone, that kind of thing.
And then there was this in the press release on the three Golden Eagles on the All-Big East teams, which was announced on Wednesday, November 11th, five days after the loss to Akron:
Marquette closed the regular season with a 10-6-1 overall record, reaching double-digit victories for the first time since 2013. The Golden Eagles scored 37 goals during the regular season, the program’s highest total since 2001.
Okay, that’s much more direct. After time to reflect on it, there’s an indication from the office that this season is not over yet. Right? You guys see that, right?
Let me spell this out for you. Here’s the link to Marquette’s team sheet so you can follow along.
- Marquette is 0-5-0 against Quadrant 1 opponents this season, and yes, they’re doing the weighted home/neutral/road thing we’ve been seeing in basketball for a few years now.
- Marquette is 1-0-0 against Quadrant 2 opponents.
- Marquette is 3-1-0 against Quadrant 3 opponents, and the loss was a 1-0 defeat against UConn on an own goal.
- Marquette is 5-0-1 against Quadrant 4 opponents. The draw was on opening night against Oakland where Marquette scored in the 2nd minute, gave up two equalizers to the Golden Grizzlies, and attempted just five shots in the entire match. One of the five wins was when Tomiwa Adewumi scored three goals in the final 22 minutes to save Marquette from trailing 1-0 in the 8th minute and giving up a second goal to the worst team they played all season nine minutes after Adewumi’s first strike tied the match AND MU needed a penalty kick in the 87th minute to avoid a draw.
- Marquette wants to point out that 10 win record, but it’s only nine against Division 1 competition. That 7-2 victory over Carroll is ignored here.
1-5-0 in the first two quadrants, the ones that the NCAA is really using to decide who’s in the tournament field and where they’re seeded.
8-1-1 against the opponents that you should really be beating if you want to make a 48 team tournament, and they got shutout in the loss and they should have lost the draw and one of the wins.
I’m sorry, but that’s not an NCAA tournament profile. Not when you kind of need to be in the top 40 to be a real candidate for inclusion in the first place, and Marquette is drifting closer to 50 as other teams wrap up their seasons this week. This season was an improvement on the first two seasons under David Korn, and that’s great. Not every season has to be a massive success, and you can improve without clinging to what certainly looks like false hopes of a postseason run when you couldn’t even qualify to be one of the four best teams in the Big East.
Who’s keeping the hope alive in the office? Is this head coach David Korn doing this? Is this just some sort of gambit to sneak a couple extra practices in before the season is “over” officially? Someone else on the administrative side gassing up Korn and his team for some reason? Someone in Communications just freelancing and making it seem like that’s the case? Or am I just reading way too much into what Marquette is putting into press releases?
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