The Marquette women’s lacrosse team keeps on winning.
The Golden Eagles (7-1) picked up their second ever win over the Louisville Cardinals Sunday afternoon at Valley Fields by a score of 15-11.
“It’s awesome,” Head coach Meredith Black said. “Louisville is an outstanding team and tough ACC opponent. It’s definitely a circled game on our non conference schedule to try to pull it out. And we’re really proud of the team.”
It’s the second time Marquette has beaten an ACC opponent in program history.
Statistical Leaders
Seven different Golden Eagles scored in the victory, with first-year attacker Tess Osburn and sophomore attacker Meg Bireley leading the way with three goals a piece.
Senior attacker Mary Schumar tallied five assists and four ground balls.
“It feels good,” Schumar said. “I love feeding other people and then my teammates really stepped up they finish their shots. Can’t do it without them.”
Senior attacker Allegra Catalano paced the Cardinals with four goals, marking a season-high for her. First-year attacker Kokoro Nakazawa added two assists on the afternoon.
Lack of control in the circle
The Golden Eagles, who leads the nation with 20.71 draw controls per contest, struggled inside the circle Sunday.
Marquette only had one successful draw in the first quarter, coming from junior midfielder Josie Kropp.
“They’re both outstanding drawers Blee and Josie,” Black said. “Josie had a better sort of defense against it, or some better way to combat it. So we went with her and obviously she ended up staying in the rest of the game because she did a great job.”
Despite the Golden Eagles struggle from the draw circle, they were able to keep up with the Cardinals ending the first quarter tied at three a piece.
The second quarter brought a game of runs for both squads, but Marquette was able to find its groove from the circle.
Louisville took its largest lead of the game when it netted three unanswered goals to go up 6-3 with 8:56 left. Marquette then responded with two goals of its own to cut the halftime deficit to one at 7-6.
Aggressive defense
Heading into Sunday, Black said she wanted to apply extra pressure on Louisville’s offense.
And the Golden Eagles followed through with that goal.
Marquette tallied 51 fouls and forced seven of 18 turnovers committed by Louisville.
“Obviously, some of those came out in fouls. We had to be smart there. We had a couple too many yellow cards, then we would want but we ended up with those 25 ground balls. That’s huge,” Black said. We’re definitely something we’ve been we’ve been working on and actually struggling with.”
The Golden Eagles also picked up 25 ground balls, with Shumar and Henry combining for nine a piece.
“It just shows that we have a lot to work on,” Schumar said. “We’re an aggressive ‘chip on our shoulder’ type of team so it’s be willing to control that chip on the shoulder and just play our game and not let that get to our heads.”
That chip lead to outscoring Louisville nine to four in the second half, and ultimately, the win.
Brick-wall Brynna Nixon
Sophomore goalkeeper Brynna Nixon had a strong performance between the pipes, recording a career-high 12 saves.
“It feels great because we’ve all been like working so hard and those 12 saves are like a testament of defense,” Nixon said. “They force them to take bad shots, which made my job really easy. Those 12 saves are a representation of the defense more and I’m super proud of them.”
Up Next
Marquette now heads back onto the road to kick-off a two game road trip Friday against Eastern Michigan.
This article was written by Emma Kroll. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @emma_kroll_.
