Winning the Big East tournament was many Marquette women’s soccer players’ biggest goal this season.
Saturday, No. 19 Xavier denied those dreams, beating the Golden Eagles 7-1 and mathematically eliminating them from postseason contention. The Golden Eagles (6-7-4, 2-4-3 Big East) are now winless through their last four games, being outscored 18-1 combined through those matches.
Marquette was rarely able to make it to Xavier’s half of the field besides short bursts that would end in an unchallenging save or missed shot.
The Golden Eagles were reminded quickly of the Musketeers’ defensive prowess, not finding their first shot until the 40th minute, constantly having to ward off Xavier shot attempts in the meantime. During that period, Xavier — a team that has scored 52 goals through 16 games this season — found the back of the net three times.
Two of those came 25 seconds apart. Leading up to the third goal, the Musketeers tallied nine shots.
Xavier (13–2–2, 8–0–1) already secured a spot in the Big East tournament, but its fire tonight came from its chase for its fourth Big East regular season title. Only five points behind Georgetown, a win tonight would mean that the Musketeers would fight for the regular season title in its last game against the Hoyas Nov. 1.
And they wanted it bad.
Only five minutes into the second half, it began raining Xavier goals.
In five minutes and 33 seconds, the Musketeers scored thrice to make the match 6-0. On the sixth goal, Elin Hansson achieved a hat trick by cleaning up a rebound from a header off a corner kick and tapping it past the left side of junior keeper Elise Krone.
Krone started in net for the first time this season, but by Xavier’s sixth goal, the Musketeers had 15 shots. She had only seen 20 all season before tonight.
Despite the extra drive in Xavier, Marquette started to find more visits to the Musketters’ half of the field, no matter how brief.
One of these trips finally paid off. The Golden Eagles got a free kick just outside the 18-yard-box. When senior midfielder Molly Keiper took the shot, the ball bounced off the wall set in front if her and made an erratic deflection into the goal to make the score 6-1.
Keiper celebrated, but not as much as usual when she scores. Not with the scoreboard reminding everyone of the hole they were in, which got deeper before the end of the game when the Musketeers scored their final goal to make it 7-1.
Marquette will travel back home to play its final game of the season against Seton Hall on Saturday, Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. CST. The broadcast will be held by ESPN+.
This recap was written by Benjamin Hanson. He can be reached at benjamin.hanson@marquette.edu or on Twitter/X @benhansonMU.