With the Minnesota Gophers in the stands watching, the Marquette women’s soccer team put on a show against Wisconsin-Green Bay tonight at Valley Fields, dropping the Phoenix, 3-0.
The Golden Eagles fell to the Golden Gophers of Minnesota in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last season, 2-1. And as the Gophers get set to take on Wisconsin-Milwaukee tomorrow, they got a preview of Marquette’s hunger for payback.
It took the Golden Eagles nearly the full first half to put something together with the Phoenix dropping player after player back into the box in an attempt to keep Marquette off the board.
“They were packing it in,” senior forward Brittany Bares said. “You’ve just got to keep breaking them down.”
UW-Green Bay’s defensive strategy worked until junior defender Stephanie Vasos pulled the trigger on a feed from fellow defender Kerry McBride from 35 yards out.
“I was wide open,” Vasos said. “So I just drilled it.”
The goal — the first of Vasos’ career — put Marquette up 1-0 at the intermission with a 13 shot attempts and four shots on goal.
The Golden Eagles only picked up the pace from there. A hailstorm of shots followed the break, slowly wearing down the opposition. The Phoenix even elected to change goalkeepers midway through the second half.
Eventually, however, Marquette was able to put the game out of reach when Bares was found by freshman Ashley Stemmeler at the top of the box and buried it at the 13:17 mark. Just 26 second later senior defender Allison McBride hit sophomore forward Danielle Martens with a perfect header opportunity, pushing Marquette up, 3-0, where it would stay.
The game was just further evidence of what coach Markus Roeders has stated before: His is a team that must and will score by committee.
“We have a lot of girls I think that can score and can contribute,” Roeders said. “And I think we have to rely on that. Ideally you would like to have three or four that score six, seven, eight, ten goals for the season. But we’ll take it.
“I think the more (players) that feel like they can score, I think the more it’s going to help us down the road, because I think they feel like, ‘Hey, if I’ve done it once, I can do it again.’”
Going by tonight’s contest, that’s a lot of players. The Golden Eagles registered 26 total shots and 11 shots on goal. There were only seven Marquette players that didn’t tally a single shot and two of those players, Allison McBride and Stemmeler, recorded assists
The message? Marquette is not about to settle for another one-goal loss to the Gophers.
“I think we all want it pretty bad,” Bares said of the Sunday Minnesota match-up. “Real bad.”
