A whole bunch of top end returning players might mean that the league looks a lot like it did in 2024.
AUGUST CONTINUES!
And as such, we continue to move closer and closer to the start of fall sports. We’ve already taken a swing at some preseason picks for volleyball in the Big East, and today, we turn our attention to women’s soccer. The Marquette season starts in just 12 days, believe it or not. Unlike volleyball, this is a sport/league that’s heavily populated by players who are returning from the 2024 campaign, so a lot of the awards we’re about to talk about were pretty straightforward to figure out.
Let’s go!
Preseason Big East Offensive Player of the Year: Maja Lardner, Georgetown
When the Big East coaches vote you as OPOY at the end of last season and you return next year, you get to be the preseason OPOY. We’re trying to predict how they are going to vote, not make picks here, after all. With that in mind, we have to point out that Lardner was not the most prolific scorer in the Big East last season. Even with the benefit of postseason production — Georgetown reached the second round of the NCAA tournament — Lardner finished 2024 at 2nd in points per game, third in goals per game, and tied for third in assists per game. We have to acknowledge that Butler’s Talia Sommer is the one tied with Lardner in assists and top of the charts in the other two categories. Lardner won the trophy last year probably largely because Georgetown was 8-1-1 and Butler was 5-2-3. Impact of points and so on.
Preseason Big East Defensive Player of the Year: Natalie Bain, Xavier
Same as Lardner: Postseason DPOY = Preseason DPOY. Bain is the anchor of a Musketeers defense that allowed just 7.8 shots per match on average last season. Goals not going in is largely impacted by your keeper, while shots getting fired off at all is on the field defense, and XU’s defense is terrifying.
Preseason Big East Goalkeeper of the Year: Cara Martin, Georgetown
KEEP THE STREAK GOING! Postseason GKOTY = Preseason GKOTY, just like the first two awards here. I told you these started to get straight forward. It’s hard to argue against the woman who finished 2024 leading the Big East in save percentage and goals against average. The only real knock on her last year is that Martin spent most of the season splitting time with Anna Karpenko and thus only logged 1,035 minutes.
Preseason All-Big East Team
Natalie Bain, Xavier, D
Regan Dancer, Xavier, M
Amelie Darey, Butler, D
Lucia Englund, Butler, D
Samantha Erbach, Xavier, F
Lizzie Heller, Georgetown, M
Anaya Johnson, UConn, M
Maja Lardner, Georgetown, F
Cara Martin, Georgetown, GK
Chioma Okafor, UConn, F
Talia Sommer, Butler, F
The obvious picks are obvious: Lardner, Bain, and Martin all get in with their individual awards. Sommer easily slides in as the Big East scoring leader last year. That gets us to 4 of 11 without even needing to engage the ol’ prefrontal cortex.
With Bain as the only returning non-forward on the all-BE list at the end of 2024, I decided to tilt things towards the forwards since I had so many returning. Okafor was tied for third in points per game and second in goals per game last year, so she’s an easy pick. Erbach was fourth in goals per game, so that wraps up the forwards at four, and apologies to Georgetown’s Natalie Means, as I can’t justify putting her on the list of 11 when she was T-6 in assists last year.
There’s only three returning midfielders on the All-Big East Second and Third Teams from last season, so there’s Dancer, Heller, and Johnson for you. That left me with two more defenders to keep things even. Darey is the only Second Team defender coming back, and I gave the nod to Englund for the last spot because I’m pretty comfortable with her being a defender for Butler in 2025. Providence’s Ella McBride was Third Team All-BE last year, but she was listed at midfield/defense….. and PC lists her on the roster at forward/midfield. Felt unfair to give her a defensive spot if she miiiiiight not actually be playing defense this fall.
Top Five Teams
1 — Georgetown
2 — Xavier
3 — Butler
4 — UConn
5 — Creighton
If you look at the all-Big East list up there, the top four spots here are pretty obvious. Georgetown gets to be in the top spot because they have two of the three individual award winners, and since Xavier has the other one, they’re second. I’m curious about what Butler can do on defense this season if they have two of the better returning defenders in the league, and they have Sommer, so that’s #3. UConn has too much to ignore, and I dropped Creighton into #5 because they were actually slightly better off than the Huskies in the RPI when they made the NCAA selections last season. I think the Bluejays have too many questions to challenge UConn when we’re making picks here, but I think they’re also in front of everyone else in the conference. Keep in mind that the Big East changed the format on the conference tournament this year, and only the top four teams will qualify.
Yes, this is mostly just typing out last year’s standings. No, I can’t bring myself to make changes to it based on what these teams are bringing back. Yes, I thought about just throwing Marquette in at the #5 spot just to be an optimistic homer about the whole thing, but I’m going to need to see Chris Allen’s team put the ball in the net a lot more before I start getting very optimistic about the Golden Eagles.
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