Three matches in 11 days to decide whether or not Marquette women’s soccer is going to be in the four team Big East conference tournament.
Wednesday night in Rhode Island. Saturday night in Ohio. Saturday night in Milwaukee.
Chris Allen’s Golden Eagles start this stretch run with a 2-2-3 record in Big East play and are trailing fourth place Villanova by three points. 12 for the Wildcats, nine for Marquette, and boy, falling 3-0 last week to VU is looming very large right now. Same with falling behind Butler 2-0 in the first half before clawing back to go to a draw with the Bulldogs, same with giving up a penalty kick to end up with a draw against Creighton, given that both teams currently sit one point behind Marquette in the standings. That’s seven points that the Golden Eagles could desperately use right now, but they’re in the rear view mirror. Nothing to be done about that, all they can do is go try to get points out of the matches that are left to go.
The good news for Marquette is that two of their matches look winnable. That’s Wednesday night against a 1-4-2 Providence team, and the regular season finale against 0-6-1 Seton Hall. The problem is that Marquette is going to need help from either Providence or Butler to sweep Villanova’s ankles out from underneath the Wildcats because, obviously, identical 2-1-0 records the rest of the way will put VU into the conference tourney field ahead of Marquette. Villanova has to play Georgetown on Wednesday, while Marquette gets Xavier on Saturday, and both squads will be up against it trying to beat a ranked opponent on the road.
Yeah, it’s going to be a rough closeout to the season for Marquette in terms of getting into the Big East tournament. Focusing on only that is slightly short-sighted, though. With just three matches left to go, Marquette’s 6-5-4 mark overall this season has already guaranteed that they will finish better than last year’s 6-11-3 season, and one more victory surpasses the win total from Allen’s first year in charge. MU needs one more win to tie last year’s Big East win total, but with only two losses and three to play, the Golden Eagles have locked in an improved record from last year’s 3-6-1 mark in league action.
No matter what happens in the next 11 days, Allen does have this program moving in a positive direction, and that needs to be celebrated, even if this year ends with Marquette coming up short in the postseason.
Big East Match #8: at Providence Friars (4-6-3, 1-4-2 Big East)
Date: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Time: 5pm Central
Location: Chapey Field, Providence, Rhode Island
Streaming: Friars Live, because PC hates you and wants your $7 for 24 hours of access
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWSOC
Marquette is 12-5-3 all time against Providence. Last year’s 2-1 victory snapped a run of six straight winless entries in the series for Marquette, although the Golden Eagles still haven’t won in Rhode Island since October 2016.
Providence comes in with one win in their last nine matches. That’s not just their seven Big East matches, but also a 1-1 draw against Cornell and a 4-0 loss to Brown to wrap up non-conference play. Their lone victory was 2-0 at home against Seton Hall, and the Friars outshot the Pirates 15-3 in that one. FUN FACT: Seton Hall is 0-6-1 in Big East action.
It’s been over 200 minutes since Providence scored a goal this season, going back to a Kristin Middaugh marker that gave the Friars a 3-2 lead that ultimately ended as a 3-3 tie with Creighton. Part of that is merely the schedule working against PC, as they had to play the Big East’s two ranked teams back-to-back. When you get outshot 47-5, that’s hard to get a goal in the net, and to a certain extent, it’s an accomplishment that they only gave up seven goals.
That shot differential in the last two has dropped their shot averages to 10.5 for and 12.2 against per game, but that hasn’t turned into good news on the goal scoring end. The Friars are getting outscored 23-12 this season, and eight of those goals are tied up in four different women scoring two each. Ella McBride and Courtnee Pickles are in that group, and they’ve added one assist each to lead the team in points with five. Ellie Thallman is the one who has played all but 17 minutes in net — those 17 were the end of the 5-0 loss to Georgetown — and as you’d expect from that goal differential on the small shot differential, her stats are not very healthy. Thallman is letting in 1.72 goals per 90 minutes this season after the last two contests, and she’s stopping just 66% of shots on frame.
Big East Match #9: at Xavier Musketeers (12-2-2, 7-0-1 Big East)
Date: Saturday, October 25, 2025
Time: 5:30pm Central
Location: Corcoran Field, Cincinnati, Ohio
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWSOC
Marquette is 9-5-1 all time against Xavier. All but the very first meeting happened since The Reformation, but MU has only won two of the last eight meetings and none of the last four, including 2-1 in Milwaukee last year.
Conveniently for our purposes here, Xavier’s the team that’s not playing on the Wednesday match day, so we can preview them here and not worry about anything changing in between now and Saturday evening. The Musketeers come in with six straight wins and two straight shutouts. In fact, XU has three shutouts in their last four matches, and weirdly, the team that they didn’t shut out was the Seton Hall team that hasn’t won a match in Big East play. Xavier went up 2-0 in the first 10 minutes of that match, scored again 40 seconds into the second half, gave up two goals 77 seconds apart with the second one coming off a penalty kick, and then scored twice more before the clock hit 53:00. That is WILD.
Marquette is going to have to defend an offensive attack that has put up 52 goals in just 16 matches. The plan there starts by trying to take away Samantha Erbach and Elin Hansson, who have 12 and 11 goals respectively. Erbach is the biggest problem on the roster, as she also has 12 assists on the season and it is quite honestly going to be a crime if she’s not the Big East Offensive Player of the Year.
It’s possible that MU’s best chance to limit Xavier’s attack is merely by mounting an attack of their own. It’s not likely, as Xavier is limiting teams to an average of just 5.5 shots per match….. while attempting 22.4 of their own. It’s a useful tactic for the Musketeers, as keeper Maria Galley is not having the best year of things on the back end of the defense. The limited shot attempts have allowed her to have a goals-against average of just 0.89, but Galley is stopping less than 70% of shots on goal. Opponents are putting more than 55% of their shots on frame this season, perhaps because they know they have to take their best crack every single time because they’re not getting that many of them.
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