It’s time to start David Korn’s second season in charge of Marquette men’s soccer.
I think we can reasonably say that no one was jump up and down excited about the Golden Eagles finishing just slightly under .500 at 6-7-4 in Korn’s first year after taking over the program following the exit of Louis Bennett. However, Marquette wasn’t all that far off from cashing in a Big East tournament appearance last season, ultimately losing a tiebreaker to DePaul for the eighth and final spot in the field.
The
problem was, clearly, Marquette struggled to score goals. MU was shutout seven times last season, and four of those came in Big East play. Five of those seven shutouts overall came in 1-0 losses or 0-0 draws.
This wasn’t a situation where Marquette was getting run over, either. All told, Marquette was just barely underwater in terms of shots for and against in 2024, losing the average shot battle 11.6 to 11.0 at the end of the season. Generally speaking, the Golden Eagles were competitive with the teams they were playing, they just couldn’t put enough finishing touches on the ball to tilt their record a little bit more in their favor.
Marquette returns three of their top four guys in terms of shots attempts last season and four of the top six. There are guys who had positive intentions on the net on their mind coming back, so in theory, that’s good news. However, those guys combined for just six goals last season.
Something needs to get changed up. Whether that’s a slightly different tactical approach, more clinical attacking by those guys who were leaders last year, or putting new guys in positive positions to contribute, that I can’t tell you. That’s a question that David Korn has to answer, and his Golden Eagles squad is going to start looking for those answers with six straight home matches to start the campaign. Maybe a lack of travel between now and late September will help them figure a thing or two out.
Match #1: vs Bradley Braves (0-0-0)
Date: Thursday, August 21, 2025
Time: 6pm Central
Location: Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
WAIT, DOES THAT SAY ESPN+? Yep, the Big East shifted their media rights from FloSports to ESPN+ in the offseason.
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteSoccer
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 1-0-0 all time against Bradley. The only previous meeting between the two sides came waaaaaaaaay back in September 1993, and MU got a 4-2 victory in overtime. Seems like they didn’t play golden goal rules then, huh?
Bradley is coming off a 4-8-4 season a year ago where they went 1-5-2 in Missouri Valley action. With that in mind, it’s up to you to decide whether it’s a good thing that they return three of their top four scorers from last season. Mitch Coughlon led all goal scorers on the Braves roster with four strikes, and his two assists on top of that gave him the team lead in points, too. Ian Ferguson and DJ Koulai were both one goal behind Coughlon, and those three guys alone accounted for 10 of Bradley’s 19 goals on the season. They do lose Francesco Pettinaroli, who had two goals and a team high three assists to tie with Koulai for the third most points on the roster in 2024. Still, that’s a pretty solid amount of returning chemistry amongst their top scorers. Koulai was the leading shot taker last season, as he started in 14 of Bradley’s matches. Coughlon and Ferguson both played less than 650 minutes while starting just six times, so I’ve got a question or two as to what exactly was holding them back.
Drew Berry is back in net for Bradley this year after logging over 1,000 minutes across 13 starts. His save percentage of .769 is a little bit on the shaggy side, and that’s how you end up allowing 1.25 goals per 90 minutes of action. Bradley’s field players in front of him weren’t exactly helping out with the defense, as they were getting outshot 13.4 to 10.1 on average. If Marquette can tilt the field in the same way, it feels like they can find ways to beat Berry.
Match #2: vs North Florida Ospreys (0-0-0)
Date: Sunday, August 24, 2025
Time: 1pm Central
Location: Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteSoccer
This is the first ever meeting between Marquette and North Florida.
North Florida had a sneaky good season a year ago. You wouldn’t think that 7-8-4 overall or 4-2-1 in ASUN action shouts “hey, good team!” at you, but the fact of the matter is that the #2 seeded Ospreys beat #3 Florida Gulf Coast and downed #4 Central Arkansas in penalty kicks to win the ASUN conference tournament. Did they catch a break with Central Arkansas beating top seeded Stetson 3-0 in the semifinals? Who can say? That conference championship earned them their second ever NCAA tournament appearance, and honestly, I bet they didn’t mind losing to West Virginia in their first tourney match all that much after that.
The Ospreys will be dealing with the departure of top scorer Joaquin Acuna, who fired in 10 goals for a team high 21 points last season. That’s probably going to sting a little bit, but if there’s ever been a team that’s prepared to deal with the loss of a guy who scored 10 goals in 15 matches, it’s this UNF squad. They bring back their next TEN point getters from last season, including top returning goal scorer David Perez, who tallied seven times last year, and overall top assist man Rentaro Miyakawa, who had a whopping nine helpers on the 32 North Florida goals that he didn’t score himself.
Keeping all that scoring around is great news for North Florida and what they might want to accomplish this season. The catch is that they need to get much better on defense. They were mostly even on shots last season, so that’s not really the problem. What is the problem is UNF’s two goalies from last year — both of whom are back this season — not even stopping 59% of shots on goal together. That is awful, and it’s not like one guy was really bad and the other was halfway decent. Luciano Natoli saved less than 60% of shots on goal last season while letting in 1.76 goals per 90 minutes, while Iu Pentinat was somehow worse at .577 and 2.45. Head coach Jamie Davies had two more guys sitting on the bench and not playing all of last year, so I have to figure that Davies and his staff evaluated that things would somehow get even worse if those guys played. I guess we’ll have to see what happens by the time Sunday afternoon rolls around, as UNF is starting the season with a Thursday night match against Wisconsin.
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