It’s been a minute since we’ve had a Marquette men’s lacrosse game on the board to talk about since the Golden Eagles last played a mid-week game against Utah and then took last weekend off. There’s been so much going on that I actually had to say “hey, what exactly happened in that Utah game?” as I sat down to put together this preview.
And what happened is that Marquette went 32 minutes without a goal against the Utes. The visiting Utes scored nine unanswered in the meantime, but it didn’t really
start looking bad until deep into the third quarter. Down 7-5 at the half after giving up the last two goals of the second quarter? That’s not so bad, you don’t like it, but you can bounce back from it. Seven more unanswered after that? Yeah, that’s not bouncing back.
Here’s the actual problem with it, other than the face value problem of you’re going to have a hard time winning games going without a goal for 32 minutes: Marquette had gone to sleep for a quarter against Mercer just a few days earlier. I made this point in my preview of the Utah game! You can lollygag through a quarter when you’re up 15-6 at halftime. Coming up empty when you went into halftime without a goal for 11 minutes already? On the heels of giving up a 5-2 third quarter to Mercer after dominating the first half?
That’s a bad sign for what awaits Marquette in Big East play, seeing as the Utes were on the far edge of the Inside Lacrosse top 20 at the time and now sitting one spot outside the rankings, while Georgetown and Denver are in the top 20. Saturday’s game down in Louisville is Marquette’s last non-conference game of the season. After that: Five straight Big East games on five consecutive weekends. This is it, right here, six weeks to the end of the season, to decide if Marquette’s a postseason team or not this year, to decide if MU can flip this 3-4 record into head coach Jake Richard’s first winning season in charge.
Game #8: at Bellarmine Knights (4-6)
Date: Saturday, March 21, 2026
Time: 11am Central
Location: Owsley B. Frazier Stadium, Louisville, Kentucky
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 6-5 all time against Bellarmine. The first ever meeting was the 11th game in MU history, and the Golden Eagles snagged the program’s first ever overtime victory down in the Commonwealth. Marquette tilted the series towards themselves with a 4-1 in the middle of the series, but a 19-11 win — featuring Bobby O’Grady breaking the program’s career points record! — by MU last year snapped a run of two in a row by the Knights.
Bellarmine was doing just fine this season. They hosted St. Bonaventure back on February 24 and beat them 14-12 to move to 4-34 on the year with losses at #10 Ohio State, at #7 Notre Dame, and at #11 Duke. Two of those got out of control at 23-8 and 29-10, but the Knights went out and scheduled three top 15 opponents and didn’t catch a break. Oh well, that’s how it goes sometimes. Had they not lost the next three games on their slate, they’d probably feel better about how this season is going, but that’s what happened. 15-7 vs LIU, 14-11 at Robert Morris, and then last Saturday, 21-8 at #19 Rutgers.
So there’s been a struggle here and there for Bellarmine, but a decent chunk of that is self-inflicted. Part of (probably a big part of) the reason why the Knights have the #42 offensive efficiency in the country per Lacrosse Reference is because they’re #67 in turnover rate. That’s out of 77 teams in the country, so yeah, it’s bad that they’re giving it away on nearly 38% of their possessions. To make that even worse? Bellarmine is #9 in the country in shooting percentage. When they get a chance to sling it at the net, the Knights put it in the net like few others can do…. it’s just hard for them to get things to that point. It seems like diligent defending from the Golden Eagles should provoke the Knights into mistakes, at that point, it’s just up to the offense to find ways to convert BU mistakes into MU goals.
As for who to focus on? Well, #2 scorer Ezra Moore (16 goals, team high 23 assists) also leads the team in turnovers with 36. That’s over three per game! Leading scorer John Alie (team high 29 goals, 18 assists) isn’t so hot either with 20 turnovers through 10 games, and #3 man Joe Alie (24 goals, 4 assists) has 13 turnovers. For the record: John is the older brother. The Alie boys are both averaging more than two goals per game with John just short of a hat trick per outing. If Marquette can push them towards a big turnover day instead of a big scoring day, things will probably work out.
Nolan Hudnut is going to be the man in net for Bellarmine. He’s played all but about an hour’s worth of time, and most of the time he didn’t play was in a blowout loss to Notre Dame. Hudnut is saving 52% of shots on goal, which is generally speaking pretty good. However, he’s under fire an awful lot, as Bellarmine gets outshot by just over 16 swings on average, 48.1 to 31.8. I’m guessing that the turnover problem is doing a lot of the work in putting Hudnut into bad situations, and that’s how he stops 52% but is still giving up 14.40 goals per hour on the field this year.
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