There’s a trend emerging for Marquette women’s lacrosse, or maybe a couple of trends, and the biggest question facing the Golden Eagles and head coach Meredith Black going into this weekend may be which one is more important in terms of finding a solution.
The reason why it’s a couple of trends is because we can look at either end of the field to isolate what’s going on. In Marquette’s last four competitive games — sorry Youngstown State — the Golden Eagles have had their offense extinguished roughly
midway through the second half.
at Jacksonville: Riley Jenkins tied the game at 10 with 5:30 left in the third quarter, then MU scored just one time between then and less than three minutes left in the fourth. That’s over 17 minutes without a goal.
at Niagara: Hanna Bodner scored with 2:52 left in the second quarter, then Marquette scored just one goal each in the third and fourth quarters. That’s stretches of over 13 minutes, 9 minutes, and 10 minutes without a goal, and that’s before we factor in going the entire first quarter without a goal, too.
vs #23 Georgetown: Isabelle Casucci scored with 11:19 left in the third quarter to put Marquette in the driver’s seat of that game. MU would score just twice more in the game, ending up with two different roughly 10 minute stretches without a goal.
vs UC Davis: Dani Serrano scored with 7:35 left in the third quarter. That was MU’s final goal of the third quarter after scoring four in the period to that point, and they wouldn’t score again until just under three minutes left. That’s over 19 minutes without a goal.
Those kinds of droughts late in games can easily turn contests that are sitting there waiting to be won into losses. That’s what happened against Jacksonville and Georgetown, and it could have easily happened against Niagara and UC Davis as the Golden Eagles won both games with a one goal margin.
The reason it’s particularly interesting that MU’s offense is getting shut down over and over again is because on the year, MU is outshooting and outscoring their opponents. They’ve got a pure shot advantage of over two per game, they’re putting more of their shots on goal than their opponents are, and that combines to MU having both more goals per game by nearly two per contest as well as just a higher percentage of shots going in. These edges would be bigger if Marquette wasn’t experiencing second half power outages. The big question for Black and her staff here is whether it’s MU just not getting looks that they were getting in those games any more, or if the shots are just missing and/or getting saved.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the field, Marquette’s defense is failing while the offense is running out of gas. Jacksonville went on a 5-1 run to tilt that game in their favor. Niagara scored five second half goals in a 15 minute window after getting blanked in the first half. Georgetown swiped the game against Marquette with a 6-1 run after totaling up just five goals in the first 35 minutes. And finally, against UC Davis, MU went from allowing just five goals in 40 minutes to giving up seven unanswered in a roughly 14 minute window.
The Davis run was particularly notable, as Meredith Black pulled goalie Jillian Howell after the fourth of those seven unanswered. At that point, Howell had allowed all four of the goals without making a save at all in the middle of any of them, so with the margin dropping to 12-9 with 12:43 to play, I do kind of see the idea of “Hey, this is slipping on you, let’s try something else.” The only issue is that Howell letting in goals wasn’t really Marquette’s problem so much as suddenly not scoring any goals was. If MU had been trading goals, if the offense hadn’t dried up, if it had been 14-9 after that goal instead… is that more tolerable to keep your freshman netminder in to let her learn from her rough patches?
And more to the point: What was accomplished by putting in Mikayla Yang and watching her give up goals on the first two shots that she faced? Was the idea of switching more about Howell having a rough patch, or was it a message to the entire team that they’ve got to buckle up because they’re letting Howell down?
And if the offense is really MU’s bigger problem…. what does that mean against a defense that’s given up single digit goals in six of their 11 games this season?
Big East Game #2: at Xavier Musketeers (2-9, 0-1 Big East)
Date: Saturday, March 28, 2026
Time: 11am Central
Location: Corcoran Field, Cincinnati, Ohio
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Marquette is 3-0 all time against Xavier. The two teams have met in all three of Xavier’s existence as a Division 1 program, and the Musketeers had their best defensive and offensive performance against the Golden Eagles in last year’s 19-9 game in Milwaukee.
Yep, Xavier’s not good. The Musketeers are coming into this game riding a five game losing streak, and the reasons it’s not longer is because they got a 16-2 win over the Detroit Mercy team that had to cancel a game with Marquette because of injuries and overall roster depth. They have been on the business end of some narrow defeats as of late, falling 8-7 on the road against William & Mary, 5-4 on the road at Old Dominion, and 11-10 at home back on Tuesday against Cal. They had a decent chance to beat the Golden Bears before the visitors scored three unanswered in the fourth quarter to take a two goal lead with three minutes left. No one scored at all in the final 10 minutes of that Old Dominion game, so XU clearly had a chance to do something there, but they did have to score with 44 seconds left in order to get within one of W&M. If they had won the draw, who knows what might have happened, but they didn’t and here we are.
If you’d like it a little more analytical than that: Lacrosse Reference ranks Xavier #119 in the county overall, and that’s out of 133 teams. They’re #119 in offensive efficiency as well, plus #130 in shooting percentage, #120 in time of possession, and #128 in strength of record.
The good news, such as it is for Xavier this season, is that they’re pretty stout on the defensive end, ranking #20 in defensive efficiency. We can have a conversation about the relative opponent strength of Eastern Michigan (allowed 9 goals in a loss) or Akron (allowed 6 goals in a loss) or Detroit Mercy (allowed 2 goals in a win) or William & Mary (8 goals in a loss) or Old Dominion (5 goals in a loss) if you want, and I see where you’re coming from. At some point though, you’re really good at defense when that many of your games have featured a team scoring in the single digits.
The star of the show there is Jada Brandon, who is making a save on nearly 47% of shots on goal. That has her second in the Big East to only Georgetown’s Leah Warehime in that department, and even Warehime isn’t over 50% on the year. The point is that Xavier isn’t necessarily getting that defensive team efficiency by luck or accident, they’re getting legitimately good goaltending from Brandon. At the very least, the field defenders are making it easier for Brandon to make saves at the clip she’s making them. Xavier’s pretty much dead even on shots for and against, so that again points to precisely how much Brandon is carrying the show for the Musketeers.
On the other end of the field, Xavier is getting most of their scoring from a trio of women who all have at least 20 points this season and two of which are averaging two points a game. Samantha Balara is one of just two women on the team with 10 or more goals right now, and she leads the way with 20. Her five assists get her to the team lead in points, but Megan Droney and Maya Graham are right behind her at 22 points and 21 points respectively. Droney has the team lead in assists with 13, while Graham is right behind her at 12. Those three women are all starters for the Musketeers, but Genevieve Hathaway comes off the bench to end up at #2 on the team in goals with 10. That’s just short of one per game, but it’s also the second best total on the team.
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