The Golden Eagles pulled within one with 43 seconds left but couldn’t finish the rally in their Big East regular season finale.
With six minutes left in the second quarter in Washington, D.C., it looked like Marquette women’s lacrosse was in a bit of trouble on national television. Georgetown had scored the first five goals of the second frame to build a 7-2 lead after the two teams had traded goals back and forth in the first period.
MU had some tricks in their pocket, and they scored the last two goals of the first half and the first two of the second half to make it a 7-6 ball game with 12:58 showing on the scoreboard. Georgetown turned it back in their favor, Marquette steered it back to a one goal game at 10-9.
Then came what is probably the point where Georgetown won the game. Maybe it was the 5-0 stretch early, but you’ll see what I mean. Three unanswered for the Hoyas and four of the next five goals had the score at 14-10 with 8:32 to play. After all of that, Marquette was back down four. But, y’know, lacrosse is weird, sometimes you don’t need a lot of time to score a lot of goals if you can win draws.
Campbell Brown had a shot saved by GU’s Leah Warehime with 6:14 to play.
Meg Bireley turned it over with 4:06 to play.
Hanna Bodner turned it over with 2:14 to play.
You see the problem here.
But Georgetown coughed it up right back to Marquette just eight seconds later, and after a timeout, Tess Osburn set home a Tessa Boehm feed. 14-11, 1:54 to go.
Lauren Grady turned it over with 1:41 to play…. but Georgetown turned it over again just six seconds later. Green card on Lily Athanas, and you can’t give Meg Bireley a woman-up situation. 14-12, 1:24 to go.
Marquette won the draw.
Tess Osburn drew a foul and converted the free position attempt. 14-13, 43 seconds left.
If you can win draws, you can score in an incredibly short amount of time. Three goals, 71 seconds apart.
But MU needed one more draw, and they didn’t get it. Georgetown’s Lucy Nace snagged her seventh draw control of the game, Hoyas called timeout once they got it settled, and then they just played keep away to run out the clock. Only so much you can do without drawing a penalty, and that was that.
Marquette wraps up Big East play at 3-3, and it appears that they’re going to need help to get into the Big East tournament.
Up Next: Marquette isn’t done with the regular season. They’ll visit Eastern Michigan next week Friday morning for an 11am Central time start in Ypsilanti, and ESPN+ will have the broadcast. The Eagles are 7-7 on the year and 3-2 in MAC play pending a Sunday afternoon home game against Akron. After that, they’ll watch the results from the rest of the Big East to see if there will be more lacrosse in 2025.