Marquette is going to get to decide a lot about the Big East standings with their 180 minutes of soccer this week.
The Golden Eagles have three matches left this season, and they trail first place Xavier by only six points. Sure, chasing down the Musketeers would require Providence and Butler to beat Xavier in their final two matches of the regular season, but mathematically, that’s still on the table. At 12 points, Marquette is in third place in the Big East. They trail second place Villanova by two points and they lead
a four-pack of teams tied at nine points by three.
Villanova comes to Valley Fields this weekend, while Seton Hall, Marquette’s host on Wednesday, is one of the four teams tied at nine points. Quite simply, two wins by Marquette this week would get them to leapfrog Villanova in the standings and push them away from Seton Hall as well. At absolute worst, two wins solidifies Marquette’s spot in the top four of the standings and thus puts them on a trail to their first Big East tournament appearance since 2017. That is SO LONG ago.
Two wins, six points, 180 strong solid minutes of soccer, will have Marquette within spitting distance of getting there if not actually officially clinching a postseason berth.
That sounds easy, right? I would agree with you if Marquette didn’t just get shut down for 45 minutes in the second half by Xavier and then get lucky to get a draw from a UConn team with just one win in Big East play through seven contests. For whatever reason, last week’s two matches seemed like Herculean labors for Marquette, and they were slightly lucky to get the equalizer that they needed against the Huskies to slip a point out of those two matches.
We’ll dive into the specifics about Villanova and Seton Hall in a second, but the short version is that it’s going to be very hard to score against both of those teams. It would be hard for anyone, but Marquette hasn’t been a fireworks factory of offensive production this season. They’re averaging less than a goal and a half per match overall and just barely outshooting teams this season. In Big East action, Marquette is averaging a goal every other match, 0.50 per contest, and getting outshot by about three per game. They’re allowing fewer than they score, which is great news, but at their current production rate, it’s hard to feel comfortable with the idea of MU finding enough scoring against their two opponents this week as we head into two very pivotal matches.
Draws would not be the worst thing for Marquette here as they would keep the point total climbing. Wins are always the preferred option, but if they have to fight for ties to get into the postseason, so be it.
Big East Match #8: at Seton Hall Pirates (6-2-5, 2-2-3 Big East)
Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Time: 5pm Central
Location: Owen T. Carroll Field, South Orange, New Jersey
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 11-3-1 all time against Seton Hall. The Golden Eagles have won the last two going into this week, both by scores of 3-0 in the past two seasons, but two of SHU’s three victories in the series were the two meetings before that, both by 1-0 scores.
Seton Hall comes in to this one with just one loss in their last four contests. The defeat came by way of Villanova and a score of 2-0, but the Pirates have recorded a shutout in the other three. They went to a scoreless draw with UConn, but came up with 1-0 wins over Providence and, in their most recent game, Georgetown. That contest is partially responsible with the weirdness in the middle of the Big East table where four teams are currently tied for the final spot in the conference tournament with nine points each, with both Seton Hall and Georgetown holding one of the four spots.
[ASIDE: What a gutting loss for Georgetown, a team that has historically been the dominant power in this league. You outshoot Seton Hall 7-0 in the first half, then the Pirates score the only goal of the match in the 74th minute on one of their five shots after intermission? Oof.]
The riddle of Seton Hall is Can You Score Against Them? If you can, you can probably win. They’re averaging less than a goal per game with 12 in 13 contests, and five of those goals came against New Haven. They’ve also only allowed five goals, and yes, two of those were to Villanova the other day. Seton Hall’s deal is, essentially, “Okay, everyone gets 10 or 11 shots, and that’s it.” It is not firewagon soccer on any level, which does perhaps indicate that this SHU/MU match might not be a thrill a minute. Kate Kleinsmith has a goals-against average of 0.43 and a save percentage of .909, so have fun with that.
Gianna Angelillo is Seton Hall’s top scorer this season with nine points thanks to three goals and three assists. Kyleigh Gorman also has three goals, and yes, that means she and Angelillo have half of the Pirates’ goals all by themselves. They also have 45 of Seton Hall’s 139 shots, and it feels like one-third of your shots coming from two players is a lot. I’m not going to do the math to figure that out, it just feels like a lot and we’lre all going to agree that that is how that feels.
Imagine being Nicole Proia on this roster with 14 shots in less than 600 minutes and no points to show for it. That’s wild.
Big East Match #9: vs Villanova Wildcats (9-1-5, 4-1-2 Big East)
Date: Saturday, October 31, 2026
Time: 1pm Central
Location: Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
Marquette is 11-4-1 all time against Villanova. That certainly seems like a one-sided series in the Golden Eagles’ favor, but that hasn’t been the case in the last three years. The two squads went to a 1-1 draw in 2023, then the Wildcats have won 3-0 in each of the past two campaigns. MU is actually just 3-4-1 in the last eight meetings.
I for one am glad that Marquette is not playing Villanova on Wednesday. I suspect that the Wildcats are currently in a terrible mood because they took their first loss of the season — not in Big East play, overall! — on Saturday. That’s a 1-0 final on the road against Butler, and shouts to Butler single-handedly deciding who’s winning what in the Big East this year between Elise May’s 70th minute winner here and Gemma Gillespie’s equalizer with 10 seconds left against Marquette. Butler plays Xavier in the final match of the regular season, and I can not imagine the unconscionable garbage that the Bulldogs are going to boot into the net in that game.
Anyway, have fun with Angry Villanova on Wednesday, DePaul. The Wildcats outshot Butler 23-10, including 14-6 in the second half, including 5-2 after Butler’s goal and four attempts in the final five minutes. Zippo.
14-6 is, by the way, nearly Villanova’s shot differential on average for an entire match this season. 14.3 for and 8.7 against are the actual averages, so Marquette’s defense is up for a test here, especially in the wake of whatever happens against Seton Hall which is seemingly obviously going to be wildly different than what happens here. That shot differential helps explain why Villanova has only allowed five goals all season, and it helps explain why Hannah Dickinson has a goals-against average of 0.49 as well. Now, the good news for Marquette is that Dickinson’s shot at winning Big East Goalkeeper of the Year is diminished by saving just under 80% of shots on frame. It’s hard to get shots that matter against Villanova, but if you can get them, you’ve got a not terrible shot at beating Dickinson and putting a goal on the board.
I can tell you that Avrie Nelson is currently Villanova’s scoring leader with six goals and 16 points this season, but there’s a strong chance neither of those things are true after the DePaul match. Dez Zapata is actually tied for the team lead in points with Nelson at 16, but she’s getting there with five goals and a team high six assists. Morgan Kotch is right behind both of them with five goals to match Zapata but only five assists to stand one point back at 15. Reasonable people can agree that all of that ordering can change as a result of playing DePaul, so we’ll see exactly who has the top spots by the time the Wildcats get to Milwaukee.
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