The 2024 season comes to an end after this game, no matter what.
Friday night will be the final game of the 2024 season for Marquette men’s lacrosse.
Providence and Villanova are both 2-2 and in a tie for third place in the Big East standings. Marquette is in last place at 0-4. With one game left to play and only the top four teams qualifying for the conference tournament, nothing can be done to catch or pass the Friars or the Wildcats.
It was clear that the Golden Eagles were not going to earn an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament when they went into Big East play with a record of 4-5, much less because they had lost five of their last six games. When Big East play began, it was clear that the pathway to one of the four conference tournament berths ran through getting wins against St. John’s and Providence because beating a ranked Georgetown team or a ranked Denver team was probably going to be too much of an ask for this Marquette team, at least in terms of a “you have to do this” result.
And then Marquette threw a 5-0 lead against St. John’s directly out the window in their first league game, got outscored 13-4 the reset of the way, and lost one of the two games that they needed to win.
Game #2: Gave up four unanswered fourth quarter goals against Georgetown to lose 11-8 after being tied at 7 with 12 minutes to go.
Game #3: Gave up five unanswered goals in the first half to trail 8-3 at home against Providence, cut it to a two goal margin twice, once early in the third then didn’t score again until the fourth when cutting it to a two goal game with 12 minutes left, couldn’t do anything else.
Game #4: With the season on the line, win or get eliminated, Marquette got blanked, 5-0, in the first quarter and fell behind 6-0 with 10 minutes left before halftime.
I’m not saying that there’s someone to blame for all of this, for this 0-4 record in Big East play that has ended any postseason chances with a game left to go. I am saying that Marquette has won just one of their last 10 games of the season, and it does seem quite apparent that the Golden Eagles have been unable to put together 60 minutes of urgent, active, hardnosed lacrosse since wrapping up their 3-0 start on February 13th. If you look at the component parts of this team — five of the most productive scorers in program history and a multi-time All-American on close defense — this team should be better than 4-9 right now.
But they’re not, they haven’t played like it, and now there’s just 60 minutes left of a season that started with preseason top 20 votes.
Big East Game #5: at #6 Denver Pioneers (10-2, 4-0 Big East)
Date: Friday, April 26, 2024
Time: 8pm Central
Location: Peter Barton Stadium, Denver, Colorado
Streaming: DenverPioneers.com, which you’ll have to pay for, and apparently Denver doesn’t have to abide by the FloSports deal?
Live Stats: Sidearm Stats
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteMLax
Marquette is 2-12 all time against Denver, with 11 of the 12 losses coming in the regular season and the two wins coming in the Big East tournament. It’s weird that Marquette is winless against the Pios in the regular season but 2-1 all time in the conference tournament, but here we are. Denver has won seven straight dating back to the 2018 Big East tourney, although three of those, including last year in the Valley, were decided by just one goal.
Well, shouts to Denver, who has already clinched at least a share of the Big East regular season title and can run the table at 5-0 and secure the #1 seed in the conference tournament if they come away from this game with a win. They weren’t the preseason poll pick to win the league, although the national media had it a close margin between the Pioneers and Georgetown, starting them at #13 and #12 in the Inside Lacrosse top 20 poll respectively. Last year was what passes for a rough year in DU lacrosse as they went 10-5 but missed the NCAA tournament. This year, the first under new head coach Matt Brown, they’re right on track to get back to the national championship field.
They have wins over Johns Hopkins and Cornell, both of whom were #6 in the country at the time, not to mention their Big East win over also #6 Georgetown. DU’s only two losses this season so far were by two goals at home against then-#15 Yale and at a neutral-ish site in Maryland against then-#3 Duke. The Pios are not notably dominant in terms of efficiency, ranking #26 on offense according to Lacrosse Reference and #15 on defense. What they do is win games against a tough schedule, as they’re #8 in LaxRef’s Team Strength metric and #3 in Strength of Record. Does this mean that maybe we’re going to see a game where Marquette gets ground to dust across 60 minutes as opposed to a game where the Golden Eagles get run out of the building by a top 10 ranked opponent? Maybe!
Defending Denver is going to be a tricky task for Marquette. There isn’t one obvious guy for the coaching staff to throw All-American defender Mason Woodward at. They have a pair of 20 goal scorers in JJ Sillstrop and Noah Manning, but Sillstrop leads the team with 21 and Manning’s exactly on the number through 12 games. Michael Lampert is the only three-point-per-game player on the roster with 35 thanks to a team high 19 assists, and he’s got at least one point in every game he’s played this season and at least a goal in every game except for the opener against Hopkins. Maybe Lampert is the guy to try to shut down, but the fact of the matter is that DU has seven guys averaging at least a goal per game and eight at a point per game.
Malcolm Kleban has played all but 14 minutes in net this season, so we’ll get a full dose of him on Friday night. Allowing just four goals against Providence last time out has driven his goals-against average down to just 9.06 per 60 minutes. Mission #1: Stopping that from falling under 9 by Saturday morning. Kleban is stopping 52% of shots on goal this season, which means he’s making a save on roughly 25% of all shots because the Pios allow less than 55% of shots on frame.