Nothing was promised for Marquette women’s lacrosse (2-0) this season and its matchup against Louisville (2-2) certainly didn’t bring a lot of promise either.
The Cardinals had won against No. 15 Denver just 10 days ago, meanwhile the Golden Eagles hadn’t had tough game experience yet this season to lean on for confidence. Despite all the reasons that Marquette could have let itself get intimidated Monday afternoon at Valley Fields, it used early scoring, eight saves from senior goalie Brynna Nixon, five goals from senior attacker Meg Bireley and critical timeouts to take victory over Louisville 13-10.
“We definitely were feeling confident going into the game that we could match up well, stop their biggest threats and handle their pressure,” head coach Meredith Black said. “We didn’t fully stop them, but we held them to the amount of goals we needed to. If we held them to 10 or less goals, we believed we would score more than 10, which we did.”
MU takes an early lead
Only 32 seconds into the game, senior midfielder Hanna Bodner passed to sophomore midfielder Lauren Grady from behind the net. Grady went high with her shot and netted her second goal of the season, giving the Golden Eagles an early lead. Marquette’s fast-paced attack would prove to be a challenge for the Cardinals to stop in the first quarter.
Junior attacker Tess Osburn would throw in the next two goals within the next four minutes to give the Golden Eagles an early lead of 3-0 with 10:20 left to play in the first.
Every goal, caused turnover and momentum-changing defensive play drew yells, cheers and hollers from the Marquette sideline, dissimilar to anything else this season.
“We talk a lot about momentum overall and starting off really strong, so that we don’t have to kind of pick it up in the second half,” Bodner said. “We had momentum to begin with today and we were able to end with it too.”
Additionally, Marquette’s full-field zone offense would give Louisville some trouble early. In the first 10 minutes, the Golden Eagles forced bad passes and outplayed the Cardinals on the ground ball game six-to-three.
The Golden Eagles and Cardinals go goal-for-goal
With 9:12 left in the first quarter, Louisville’s Erin Nicholson knocked down the team’s first goal of the game to make it 3-1. Though, just 31 seconds later, Bireley responded for the Golden Eagles and grew the lead back to three (4-1).
It would be 15 minutes before Marquette saw the back of the net again and during that time, Louisville punched in four unanswered goals, two of which were free position. The Cardinals were taking their time on the attack and being picky about the shots they chose to take.
Even so, Marquette put in two goals of their own before the end of the first half and led 7-6 going into the locker room. The Golden Eagles stayed with Louisville thanks to relinquishing half as many turnovers and creating three times as many caused turnovers.
In the third quarter, only three goals were scored and going into the fourth, it was tied at eights. Though, right before the third quarter ended, Black yelled to her players, “Hold the ball,” so that they would have possession to start the next quarter.
This ended up paying off as Marquette, while a woman up, would feed the ball to Osburn to score only 15 seconds after the start of the final quarter. This would give Osburn a hat trick and inspire Bireley to score four minutes later on a behind-the-net pass from Bodner to put the Golden Eagles up 10-8.
Tess with the goal!#WeAreMarquette pic.twitter.com/csGG5YsU7B
— Marquette Women’s Lacrosse (@MarquetteWLax) February 17, 2025
More alternating scoring and 13 saves from the Louisville goalie J Pleck later, the scoreboard read 11-10 in favor of Marquette with 5:25 left to play. Again, Black called a timeout to draw something up. After running the clock for most of the 90 seconds, Bodner attacked the net straight on and used a bounce shot to score, ice the game and put the Golden Eagles up 12-10. Black’s huddles were working wonders Monday.
“[In those huddles] we were focusing on going full speed within our offense,” Black said. “Our offense is a motion offense, and we knew they play a man-to-man defense. If we drove hard on them, we knew we’d be able to find either the open shot or the open look.
“Our big thing is ‘100 P.’ Make sure it’s a 100 percent opportunity. Don’t throw something that’s 50 percent or that could get caught and be scored off of. We don’t want those looks. We want a guarantee goal.”
With a critical draw control from Taylor Kotschevar and good clock management, Marquette closed it out with a final empty-net goal and the win.
Up Next
Marquette will begin their two-game away stint when it travels to Cincinnati, Ohio on Thursday to matchup against the Cincinnati Bearcats at 2 p.m. CST.
“This will be great confidence,” Black said about their upcoming two away games. “We’ve been working really hard in the offseason, and we believe in ourselves, but I think having scores like this to show for it really makes a big difference. It just shows what we’re capable of and it helps us push an extra push because they know they can fight through a tough moment and come out on top.”
This recap was written by Ben Hanson. He can be reached at benjamin.hanson@marquette.edu or on Twitter/X @benhansonMU.
