The Big East announced the result of the preseason poll for the 2026 women’s lacrosse season on Wednesday afternoon, and I can’t say it’s particularly fantastic news for YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles. Meredith Black’s team was picked to finish fifth by the league’s coaches, earning 16 points in the balloting. Georgetown is at #4 with 24 points, while Butler and Xavier are #6 and #7 at 11 and 6 points respectively. Why is that not ideal news? Well, mostly just because the conference tournament is a four
team event and this voting points out that the league’s coaches don’t expect the Golden Eagles to get there at the end of the regular season.
Denver is the unanimous pick to win the league, and that’s not surprising since they’ve lost one regular season game since the membership of the league changed in 2019. Coaches can’t vote for their own team, so Denver head coach Liza Kelly voted for UConn, which is third, but it’s a narrow fight there. Villanova has 28 points, UConn has 26, and Georgetown has 24. Villanova clearly does not have all six second place votes, as that would be 30 points, so it’s clear that the coaches are not united on where to place the next three teams in the rankings even just beyond Kelly voting for the Huskies. We can tell from the six points for Xavier that they were voted last on all six ballots, which seems a little unfair since the Musketeers beat Butler a year ago to help send the Bulldogs to a winless record in Big East action.
Elsewhere in Marquette news, the Golden Eagles have four women on the 17 player preseason all-Big East team. Considering that this is a sport where you play 12 on 12, that’s an insane number of people, even if you add a draw specialist to the list. MAKE A HARD CHOICE, BIG EAST OFFICE. Say, for example, if everyone votes for one draw control specialist, you don’t need to add a second one for giggles or whatever the logic is.
anyway…..
Both Hanna Bodner and Tess Osburn were unanimous choices for the preseason all-Big East team, and they are joined by Lauren Grady and Mary Velner. Here’s how the Marquette press release wrote these honors up:
Bodner, the reigning BIG EAST Midfielder of the Year, returns for a final season with the Golden Eagles. Bodner was a First Team All-BIG EAST selection last season, and also earned a spot on the IWLCA All-West/Midwest Region First Team.
Osburn, a two-time Second Team ALL-BIG EAST selection, begins her senior campaign after posting a 45 goals, 19 assists and 64 points in 2025. Last season, Osburn became the ninth player in program history to score 100 goals in her career and sits at seventh on the all-time goals list (111).
Grady and Velner also earned their spots on the Preseason All BIG-EAST team after both earning All BIG-EAST Second Team selections a season ago. Grady aided in the offensive pressure, completing a 17 goal, 14 assist, 31 point season, and Velner delivered on the defensive end, causing 19 turnovers in her sophomore season.
Grady is the only one of the four I didn’t have on my preseason all-conference team, but again: I limited myself to 13 women, mirroring a lineup you can put on the field plus a spot for a draw specialist since that’s a thing the league has started doing. Given Grady’s honors a year ago, there’s no doubt she’s worthy of inclusion, I just had limited spots for midfielders.
As far as the rest of my picks went, I can’t say things went smoothly. As somewhat expected, the Big East coaches leaned towards “goals” as a measure of offensive ability and not “points,” so Denver’s Olivia Ripple is the Preseason Offensive Player of the Year instead of UConn’s Rayea Davis, who has to merely settle for being one of 11 unanimous picks on the all-conference team. Defensive Player of the Year went to UConn’s Abby Beran, but that was obvious to everyone since she got the postseason version of that award last year.
For the all-conference team, I got 11 of my 13 picks right, which is pretty great. The misses are Xavier’s Lola Mancuso and Georgetown’s Leah Warehime. Mancuso finished third in the Big East in goals per game last year, but I presume the coaches docked her because they were voting Xavier last. Warehime is the best returning starting goalie in the Big East, but I can’t fault the pick of Denver’s Lexi Gwaku other than she was the backup last year and didn’t really play big minutes to justify the pick here. Then again, if she’s backstopping the best team in the league, it’s probably a pretty good vote in terms of what the all-conference team looks like at the end of the regular season, right?
Marquette’s lone preseason exhibition contest is coming up on Saturday, January 31, when the Golden Eagles host University of Chicago at 1pm Central. Things get going for real less than a week later when Marquette hosts Eastern Michigan and Cincinnati in the same weekend, just on opposite sides of National Marquette Day. First draw for both of those games are Noon Central on Friday, February 6th, and Sunday, February 8th.
You can check out the full Big East press release here and you can read the entire Marquette press release over here.
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