One 27th minute goal was the difference on Thursday night at Valley Fields, as Milwaukee downed Marquette 1-0 in women’s soccer. The Golden Eagles fell to 1-2-0 on the year, and they have now gone 270 minutes into the season without scoring a run of play goals.
It’s not great.
The bummer of this one is that Marquette had the offensive control of Thursday night’s match for the first 20 minutes or so. The first four shots of the game were all coming off of Marquette’s feet while UWM didn’t manage a shot at all. That’s something.
Also something: The Panthers converted their third shot of the game to what turned into the game winning goal. No captured video of the goal exists, so I can’t share it with you here. Thanks to the FloFC replays, I can just watch that thing on a loop and say “sweet Christmas, is that the definition of shambolic defending or what?” Kat Van Booven shoves a cross out into the middle of the field, right out in front of MU keeper Mikki Easter, and it eventually gets to Haley Johnson, who just heel flips it into the far post for the goal. An awful goal to concede all the way around.
The rest of the match favored UWM in terms of shots, as they beat MU in that department 8-5 in the second half. The Golden Eagles made keeper Parker Donahue make six saves split between the two halves to shut them out, but Easter made just two second half saves in pursuit of MU’s second win of the season.
Up Next: Head coach Frank Pelaez and his staff will have a week between matches to try to figure out how to get the offense going. The Golden Eagles will be back at it next Thursday when they host Illinois-Chicago. The Flames are currently 0-2-0 on the year with a loss at Louisville and another at home to DePaul. They will host Eastern Illinois on Sunday before making their way up I-94 for Thursday’s match. That one will be the first of two matches next weekend for Marquette, as they will follow that up with a Sunday afternoon home match against Green Bay. The Phoenix are 2-0-0 with wins over Chicago State and Western Illinois, but they’ll play #24 Wisconsin on Sunday and they had a match against St. Thomas called due to weather while trailing 2-0. In theory, winnable matches for Marquette, but it’s going to take some notable effort based on how the first three matches of the year have gone.