Marquette men’s soccer dropped its season opener Thursday night, falling to No. 11 Tulsa 4-2 at Valley Fields.
“Disappointing, we weren’t good enough,” head coach Louis Bennett said. “The biggest deficit was that we didn’t take advantage of chances that we had and they (Tulsa) did. And then they just wore us down (of) not being able to put the ball in the back of the net. And then, we became sloppy. We’re not quite there yet.”
First-year goalkeeper Ludvig Malberg started in net for the Golden Eagles. It is the first time since April 15, 2021 that senior goalkeeper Chandler Hallwood did not start between the pipes for Marquette.
Bennett said Malberg got the start as Hallwood isn’t cleared yet.
Both teams came out aggressive, creating early scoring opportunities.
In the 23rd minute, senior forward Lukas Sunesson worked up the rights side of the field on the breakaway before firing a shot on net. However, Tulsa goalkeeper Alex Lopez deflected it out of bound.
The Golden Eagles would then follow up with two more shots on goal but neither found the back of the net.
Four minutes later, broke the silence when a Tulsa cross pass into the box was deflected off of a Marquette defender allowing the Golden Hurricanes to take a 1-0 lead.
The Golden Hurricanes extended their lead to 2-0 in the 34th minute when junior midfielder Sergio Baena put one pass Malberg. It was Baena’s first goal of the season.
In the 54th minute, Tulsa built its lead to 3-0 on a shot from senior forward Thomas Wells.
Then 11 minutes later, Marquette broke its silence when Sunesson put a penalty kick from inside the box behind Lopez.
Following Tulsa’s fourth goal of the night in the 84th minute from Alex Meinhard, Marquette cut the deficit to two in the 89th minute when sophomore forward Karim Abdoul Pare found sophomore forward Edrey Caceres into the box.
Tulsa outnumbered Marquette virtually in every statistic, including outshooting the Golden Eagles 18-16.
“They really didn’t show anything that we didn’t expect,” Bennett said of Tulsa’s continuous pressure on the night. “And in the first half, we played around that pressure and we pressured them. They were turning the ball over and then they have that (first) goal, that kind of gave them a little bit more stability to be able to weather the storm. They weathered the the storms that we created and we didn’t create a lot of them, but we created some and we didn’t weather the storm very well.”
Marquette (0-1) will not have much time to dwell on the loss as the Golden Eagles host Utah Tech Sunday at 2:05 pm CST at Valley Fields.
Bennett said he is looking for his team to respond and “bounce back” in their training leading up to Sunday’s match.
“We have to play well, we have to win games and we have to get people back in the in the stands wanting to watch our style of soccer,” Bennett said. “Tulsa is a very, very good team. And look how many games they won last year, they were picked to maybe go to the Final Four, didn’t lose anyone and now we’ve got a line, we know where we are and now we now know what we got to do.”
