Heading into Saturday afternoon’s game against No. 8 Villanova, men’s lacrosse coach Joe Amplo knew Villanova would be a formidable offensive challenge, describing the Wildcats as “playing with a tremendous amount of efficiency this year.”
Amplo may not have accounted for Wildcats freshman attackman Keegan Khan, who scored seven goals on nine shots and one assist in Villanova’s 14-9 win over Marquette.
Khan’s seven goals were the most Marquette (4-4, 1-1 in BIG EAST) has given up to an individual all season. The Chatham, New Jersey native scored five goals in the second half and had four of the Wildcats’ six third-quarter goals.
Junior defenseman Brendon Connolly said he knew the scouting report on him, but that wasn’t enough to stop Khan.
“He’s a good player,” Connolly said. “He’s a young guy who works really hard, and we just need to work on getting back on our recoveries. And he was in the right place at the right time.”
Marquette came out hot, grabbing a 1-0 lead from junior attackman John Wagner and had the score tied at 3-3 after the first quarter, and even led 4-3 midway through the second quarter. However, that would be as close as the Golden Eagles would get. Villanova graduate senior midfielder Devin McNamara scored a pair of goals, including a goal with one second remaining, to help Villanova (8-2, 1-o in BIG EAST) a 6-4 lead heading into the break.
While it was not an insurmountable lead, Marquette did not respond well in the third quarter, committing four of its eight penalties in the quarter.
“Sometimes the calls are going to go our way and sometimes, they’re not,” Amplo said. “We’ve had three games with zero penalties, and sometimes, the refs call it a little bit tighter than others.”
The Golden Eagles scored just two goals in the second and third quarters combined. Marquette did not score from the 11:44 mark of the second quarter to the 7:56 mark in the third, a span of over 18 minutes. During that stretch, Villanova scored eight goals and had a 12-5 lead at the end of the third quarter.
“Credit to (Villanova),” Amplo said. “They do such a good job offensively. They move the ball really well and they’ve got threats at every position.”
While Marquette had a 4-2 scoring advantage in the final frame, which included John Wagner’s third hat trick of the season, the Golden Eagles could not do enough late to mount a comeback.
“We got beat by a better team today, and for us, we’ve got to take that disappointment and we’ve got to learn from it,” Amplo said. “It’s an opportunity to learn from it and grow with this young team, but ‘happy’ is not in my vocabulary right now.”
Marquette will travel to New York to square off against St. John’s next Saturday.
