The Marquette men’s soccer team spent much of its 2025 season walking the line between promise and frustration.
Despite a tactful style of play and the efforts of several key contributors, many poor spells of form saw the Golden Eagles miss the Big East Tournament for the fifth year straight
“Definitely a really crazy ride of emotions, but I wouldn’t trade it in for anything in the world,” senior captain Justin Milovanov said.
Finishing the year with a 7-7-2 record, the final product was just shy of their early season projections.
Trips to Big East opponents told the story best, as they rarely ended in celebration, while wins off Valley Fields were also few and far between.
Marquette stayed competitive, but finishing chances — and games — became the difference between what was and what could have been.
Despite two red cards in their first three matchups, the Golden Eagles established a 3-0-2 record after their opening quintet of games.
With key comebacks against the likes of North Florida and Drake, as well as unimpeded performances against Chicago State and Lipscomb, Marquette looked poised to make serious shockwaves in the Big East in their second season under head coach David Korn.
Their undefeated start entirely taking place at Valley Fields, it was once the Golden Eagles hit the road and simultaneously started conference play that bumps started to form in their results, a 1-0 defeat at Creighton was the starting gun.
After defeating UW-Milwaukee and taking home the Milwaukee Cup in late September, a stretch of games followed in which Marquette consistently contested and defeated in key matchups against conference opponents.
Close losses to Seton Hall and Xavier followed, leaving the Golden Eagles at the bottom of their Big East division to start October. For the second straight year under Korn’s tenure, they were on the outside of the playoffs looking in with a lot of work to do.
“The gap between the number one college team and the last ranked college team is not as big as people might seem to believe,” Milovanov said, “during those [tough stretches], we just had to believe in our ability.”
In several of these matches, the Golden Eagles found themselves trailing after strong starts, unable to convert possession into goals. The narrow losses highlighted the challenge of carrying home form into conference venues.
At this point in the season, Korn began to make significant changes to what was a clear-cut 4-3-3 system during his opening almost 20 games at the helm.
Placing faith in players such as Milovanov and sophomore Bryce Richards to make notable shifts to more defensive positions, they continued the rest of the campaign in a defensively-sound 3-5-2, while sticking to their possession-based offensive philosophy.
“You know, we had some injuries in the back, we were looking to generate more of an offensive spark,” Korn said. “So I’m super pleased with the way they adapted to it.”
After this major shift, key performances from Nico Pendleton, Mads Horgoien and Mateo Stoka on the offensive end saw goals fly against UIC, Edgewood and during their sole conference victory against DePaul.
Despite those performances, momentum didn’t quite carry over into the remainder of conference play, as three more key losses against Butler, Providence and Akron continued their woes in those closely-decided Big East road matches.
Rounding out the season on Nov. 7 with yet another 1-0 conference loss — this time at the hands of Villanova — Marquette concluded Big East play with six more defeats than victories, all of those defeats coming by 2 goals or less.
Coming short of early-season expectations, the experience of fighting for the program every week established relationships and created memories for players and coaches alike.
“The environment and training, the way the guys got along, (it was) a lot of fun to work with them, I was really pleased,” Korn said. “The biggest thing will be continuing to build relationships with them [the players], try to help them grow to be the best version of themselves that they can be, and for us to be the strongest team we can be.”
This article was written by Eamon Bevan. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @EamonBevanMU.
