In its final home contests of the season, Marquette fell against both No. 8 Georgetown and No. 17 Loyola Maryland.
The Hoyas were a handful, but the Golden Eagles held their own for the majority of the game. Marquette struck first on a bounce shot from freshman attacker and co-captain Emily Donovan. Georgetown answered with a 3-0 run to take the lead, but freshman defender Elizabeth Goslee scored her first goal of the season to cut the lead to one. That was as close as Marquette would come as Georgetown closed the half with a 4-1 run to take a 7-3 lead into the half.
To start the second, both teams traded tallies in the first 20 minutes as each team scored three to make it 6-10. However, the visitors once again would finish the half with a 3-1 run and took the game 13-7.
“I thought we played great,” coach Meredith Black said. “The scoreboard (didn’t) give us a win, but we definitely played well for our team.”
Freshman goaltender Sarah Priem was the star again, finishing the day with 10 saves and leading a solid defensive performance.
“I thought my defense really helped me,” Priem said. “We had nothing to lose, and we just played like we had nothing to lose.”
Coming off Friday’s solid performance, the team returned to Valley Fields for the senior day game to honor Marquette’s four seniors and also celebrated raising almost $10,000 for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.
Though the pregame ceremonies had the team’s spirits running high, the game was vastly different. Right off the opening draw, the Greyhounds were in control of the game. They scored the first five goals of the game before the game was 10 minutes old. Freshman midfielder Kenzie Brown ended the drought, scoring on an overhand shot from a distance, but that would be Marquette’s lone goal of the half. Going into the break, the Golden Eagles were outshot 22-3 and trailed 13-1.
After the team went down 11-1, freshman goaltender Emma Salter replaced Priem for the remainder of the game.
The tempo slowed down in the second half, but again the Golden Eagles only posted one goal on a wide-open net when the Loyola goalie was forced out of the crease, allowing freshman attacker Claire Costanza to score.
“We came out a little bit, you know, on our heels, and I think they just took advantage,” Black said. “We knew that they were a great fast-breaking team – that’s their strength. They score a lot of goals in transition and so we were ready, we were prepared for that to happen, but I don’t think we played with enough intensity at the beginning of the game to stop that fast break.”
The defense stepped up, only giving up four goals in the second half, two of which came in the final minute of the contest.
“In the locker room we realized again that we need to step it up because we’re so much better than we showed today,” said redshirt freshman defender and co-captain Jenaye Coleman. “We realized we had to go out and play for the seniors because it was their last home game, so we wanted to go out with a bang,”
From here, the team travels to play two games this weekend against No. 28 Connecticut Friday and No. 4 Syracuse Sunday.