hey, it was competitive for 15 minutes, that’s something….. right?
Beau Westphal scored with 8:15 left in the first quarter in Denver on Thursday evening to put Marquette men’s lacrosse up 2-1 on top seeded Georgetown in the Big East tournament semifinals. After the two teams went to double overtime in a closely contested game in the regular season, everything about this made sense.
And then Georgetown went on an 18-6 run the rest of the way to advance to Saturday’s championship game against the winner of the Villanova/Providence semifinal by way of a 19-8 victory.
The writing was on the wall not when Georgetown scored the final two goals of the first quarter, but when they scored the first three goals of the second quarter as well. More importantly to that, they held Marquette without a goal until there was less than two minutes left in the half. It was just 6-3 heading to the locker room, but it felt a lot deeper of a hole than that with just one goal in the final 23 minutes of the half.
In the third quarter, Georgetown was completely fine letting Marquette score once for every two Hoya goals. That led to a 13-5 margin with one quarter left to play, and it was pretty clear how this was already over.
Marquette’s first season under the direction of Jake Richard ends on a bit of a down note, but you have to look at the upside. It was Marquette’s first Big East tournament appearance since 2022 and, at 7-7, it was the first season with more than six wins or a .500 or better finish since the Golden Eagles went 8-8 after an NCAA tournament loss in 2018.