Marquette has a new single season goals leader after Bireley scored six when only needing three for the new record.
There were two things on the checklist for Marquette women’s lacrosse on Saturday in Cincinnati.
- Beat Xavier and keep the Big East tournament hopes alive.
- Get Meg Bireley the three goals she needed to break the program’s single season goals record and become the first Golden Eagle to ever score 60 goals in one campaign.
The previous record was 59, first established in 2019 by Grace Gabriel when she broke her own record of 56 set the year before, and that was merely knocking down the 55 that Julianna Shearer had the year before that. Lydia Foust nearly broke it last season, but ended up in a tie with with Gabriel.
Bireley came in with 57 goals, more than anyone else other than the two women tied for the record. First things first for her? Tallying an assist on Tess Osburn’s goal that gave Marquette the lead for good in this game, and then Goal #1 put Marquette up 3-1 with 9:32 to go in the first quarter:
58th goal of the season for Meg! #WeAreMarquette pic.twitter.com/KlV8tDIM58
— Marquette Women’s Lacrosse (@MarquetteWLax) April 20, 2024
The record tying goal came nearly three minutes later, when Bireley put Marquette up 4-1 with 6:58 left in the first:
59!#WeAreMarquette pic.twitter.com/CqRIW5lCf8
— Marquette Women’s Lacrosse (@MarquetteWLax) April 20, 2024
Bireley had to wait for the second quarter to break the record. This power play goal with 11:11 left in the second quarter gave her 60 for the season, and it put Marquette up 10-2.
6⃣0⃣
Meg Bireley scores her 60th goal of the season, new program record for goals in a season #WeAreMarquette pic.twitter.com/9sFUoGlK2Y
— Marquette Women’s Lacrosse (@MarquetteWLax) April 20, 2024
The thing I like most about this is that Bireley’s first three points of the game came on goals that could easily be defined as “Absolutely not today, Xavier” goals. The Musketeers scored on their first shot of the game to tie it up at 1-1 early, and Bireley assisted on the next goal of the game before scoring the next two herself. The message and tone was set, even if the Musketeers did score goal #2 of the game in the immediate wake of Bireley’s record tying strike. From there, her teammates picked it up and sent the game out of XU’s reach before Bireley scored again.
Oh, by the way: she was not done.
#61:
Four on the day for Meg!
61 on the season.#WeAreMarquette pic.twitter.com/MtfitBe0xg
— Marquette Women’s Lacrosse (@MarquetteWLax) April 20, 2024
#62:
62nd of the season!#WeAreMarquette pic.twitter.com/N7q8TcpENs
— Marquette Women’s Lacrosse (@MarquetteWLax) April 20, 2024
And yeah, #63, a six goal day for Meg Bireley:
Six on the day!#WeAreMarquette pic.twitter.com/VHQzIHJ8Ge
— Marquette Women’s Lacrosse (@MarquetteWLax) April 20, 2024
Those goals gave Marquette leads of 12-2, 15-3, and 16-3. Like I said: Absolutely not today, Xavier.
Item #1 on the list of the things to do was accomplished by Item #2, and dang if that ain’t great to see. At the end, it was a first career goal in a first career appearance by Shannon Murphy and a first goal of the season for Elle Wagner that wrapped things up at 21-4 for Marquette. Mission accomplished, and Marquette moves to 2-3 in Big East play to keep their conference tournament chances alive with one game left to go.
By the way: Marquette head coach Meredith Black did make the call to go with freshman Mikayla Yang in net against Xavier on Saturday. If you wanted to be particular about it, things didn’t go great for Yang as she let in the first two shots she faced…… but #1: Those were the only two shots of the entire first quarter for the Musketeers and #2: She did come up with saves on the next two, and after that, Marquette was clearly in control of the game. Yang went the full 60 minutes, finishing with three saves and four goals allowed, but her offense and field defense — and the running clock with a double digit lead, by the way — did a hell of job to make her life easy with just 11 total shots attempted by Xavier in 60 minutes.
Up Next: That one remaining game will be next weekend at Valley Fields, and it will be Villanova coming to town for what amounts to a play-in game for the four-team Big East tournament field. Both teams are 2-3 coming in, and whoever is 3-3 at the end of it gets the last spot. The Wildcats are 6-8 overall and coming off an 11-8 home loss to #12 Denver on Saturday. First draw on Saturday, April 27, is set for Noon Central.