It’s an eight match league schedule in the Big East.
Marquette has played two. That’s one-quarter of the schedule.
The Golden Eagles are 0-2-0. The Golden Eagles haven’t scored a goal against a Big East
opponent yet this season.
It’s not like they’re getting trampled out of the building. Shots were 14-10 in Creighton’s favor in the opener as the Bluejays won 1-0 on an 81st minute goal. Shots in the Seton Hall match were dead even at 13 after the match ended at 2-0 for the Pirates, although it is notably troublesome that MU didn’t get a shot on goal until the 79th minute when you could probably argue that Seton Hall was starting to get a little bit more cautious because why not with a two goal lead in the final 12 minutes?
It was easy enough to overlook problems with how the season was going when Marquette didn’t play with the 11 starters that they wanted on the field for the full 90 minutes until the fifth match of the year. Now we’re eight matches into the season and one-quarter of the way through Big East play, and it’s starting to get late very early for the Golden Eagles. On Friday, they play a team that has had their own problems so far this season, but they also feature one of the best goal scorers in the conference this year.
If Marquette’s going to pull things together and make a push for the Big East tournament, it has to start on Friday night in the Valley.
Big East Match #3: vs Xavier Musketeers (3-3-2, 0-1-1 Big East)
Date: Friday, October 3, 2025
Time: 7pm Central
Location: Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteSoccer
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 8-5-3 all times against Xavier. The Golden Eagles haven’t picked up a win against the Musketeers since the timeshifted 2020 season as it’s been nothing but 2-1 losses and 0-0 draws since then, including a tie a year ago in Ohio.
Things did not start out great for Xavier men’s soccer this season, falling to 1-2-1 out of the gate. A 6-0 win over Siena was a nice buoy for a moment, but a 1-1 draw with St. John’s and a 3-2 loss to Providence on either side of a 2-1 win over Northern Kentucky (the Norse scored in the 90th minute in their only shot on goal of the match) leaves them where they are right now…. which is at least one point in front of Marquette in the standings with six matches to play. At least they have that, even if their RPI is completely in the tank at #122 in a sport with 213 teams.
The worst part about this for the X-Men? They’ve got one of the best goal scorers in the league. Cooper Forcellini has nine goals in eight matches this year. He’s tied for the overall lead in goals and he’s the only player averaging more than a goal per game. Forcellini’s 18 points have him #2 overall and tops in points per game as one of just two guys in the league — Georgetown’s Zach Zengue is the guy with the overall lead in both — putting up over 1.4 points per game….. and they’re both north of two. Forcellini’s not even riding a silly day against Siena in that 6-0 match to this point, as he only scored once in that match, and his was the last one! XU didn’t even need him to score to win, which was the case against NKU and he had both of their strikes in the loss to Providence AND St. John’s held Forcellini without a goal on one shot in that draw. If Marquette can mark him properly, that’s the pathway to a win. He’s leading Xavier with 23 shots, so it’s not like it’s complicated to figure out what they’re trying to do on offense.
On the other end of the field, Gabriel Kuffel appears to be the likely starter on Friday. He’s played every minute of the last four matches after seizing the starting job from Jonny Mennell, and he’s stopping over 73% of shots on goal. Giving up three to the Friars has ballooned his goals-against average up to 1.25 per 90 minutes, so Marquette’s job has to be to keep the pressure on Kuffel. That works on two levels as more pressure on Kuffel means less time for Cooper Forcellini to be anywhere near the ball in MU’s defensive third.
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