Marquette Men’s Lacrosse Preview: vs Villanova

The Villanova Wildcats mascot on the floor during the Quarterfinal round of the Big East Basketball Tournament against the Creighton Bluejays at Madison Square Garden on March 9, 2023 in New York City.

I think Marquette clinches a Big East tournament berth with a victory on Saturday.

The Golden Eagles already can’t finish lower than fifth because even if they end up in a tie with St. John’s for last, MU has the tiebreaker with the Red Storm. Everything else is up in the air right now, but a third league win would mean the Golden Eagles can only fall to two losses, and that’s where Providence already is. Marquette has the tiebreaker with the Friars, and thus they have to finish in front of them as well, which would mean no worse than fourth. Four teams make the conference tournament field, and so there you go.

It’s fun to be in control of your own destiny, as that’s not where Marquette was last year with two games to go. Last year, Marquette got an absolute gift with Denver losing their second to last game of the season to set up a “winner gets in” regular season finale in Milwaukee. Now all Marquette has to do is assemble 60 minutes of quality lacrosse against a Villanova team that’s clearly struggling and coming off an ugly loss last week.

That’s not to say this is going to be easy for Marquette. They needed a surprising rally to down Providence in their Big East opener and then escaped Queens with a second straight overtime victory after St. John’s pushed the Golden Eagles into overtime. Making the plays to get the wins is important, obviously. But Marquette was nearly left for dead in the PC game and came waaaaaay too close to coughing up a win against a St. John’s team that is now 2-10 on the season after a 15-9 loss to Denver last week.

Lacrosse Reference tells us that Marquette’s problem is their defense, which ranks #62 in the country in efficiency out of 77 Division 1 squads. The Golden Eagles are undefeated on the year (5-0) when they hold teams under a 31% conversion rate, which unfortunately means they’re 1-5 when that number drifts over 31%. The win is, unsurprisingly, the Providence contest.

Smart, simple, strong decisions. Dialed in defense. 60 minutes of doing the best possible thing on Senior Day in the Valley, hopefully outside on the grass turf field, depending on how the rain goes for the rest of the week. Do what it takes now to avoid needing to win in the mountains next week to get into the conference tournament.

BY THE WAY: This game is the front end of a doubleheader with the women’s lacrosse team. That game is set to start at 2pm Central time, with the plan being for both games to take place on the western/grass field at Valley Fields. We’ll see if the rain this week actually holds up and allows that, but keep in mind that you have a two-for-one Senior Day opportunity if you’re attending.

Big East Game #4: vs Villanova Wildcats (5-6, 2-1 Big East)

Date: Saturday, April 18, 2026
Time: 11am Central
Location: Valley Fields, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast

Marquette is 3-11 all time against Villanova. After five meetings, the Golden Eagles held a 3-2 advantage in this series and were coming off a Big East semifinals victory against the Wildcats. Marquette has not won since, including a pair of overtime games in 2017 and 2023. Last year’s 14-13 VU victory was MU’s ninth straight loss in the series.

When I did the Big East conference play preview, Villanova was 3-5 on the year with an RPI rank of #40. I thought maybe the Wildcats were just a bit unlucky with a win over a ranked Penn State team and three losses to ranked foes. Their 14-7 loss to Lehigh going into conference action wasn’t a great sign, but again: Maybe the record was more about challenging themselves and coming up short more than anything else.

The start of Big East play moved the Wildcats in that direction as they kicked St. John’s around, 21-7, and then toppled Denver, 9-7, to get to 2-0 in the league. That Denver win was kind of notable relative to my “mostly unlucky theory,” as they went up 5-2 late in the second, gave up a 5-1 run to fall behind 7-6, then scored three in the final six minutes to get the W.

And then they hosted Providence for Senior Day last weekend. 5-1 at halftime. 7-3 going into the fourth quarter. 8-4 after a man-up goal by David Evanchick with 11:14 to go. 9-7 on a goal from David Link with 4:21 left, and that score held as the clock went under three minutes to play. Up 9-8 with a minute to go.

Lost, 10-9, in overtime. Providence took their awful collapse of a loss to Marquette and passed that psychic shock to the Wildcats.

Defending the Wildcats is going to be an interesting problem for Marquette. On one hand, Luke Raymond is their leading scorer with 31 goals on the year. That’s just a tad short of a hat trick per game and no one else on the roster has more than 17 goals. Raymond is also their points leader at 36, and no one else has more than 22. Raymond takes a bunch of their shots with 65 on the season, but he’s not the leader. That’s Colin Michener, who has a team high 82 shots……. but only 17 goals and three assists. Third on the team in points, second behind Raymond in goals, but his shooting is dominating the offense. If Marquette can keep him inefficient — and his inefficiency is probably helping push VU down to just #49 in offensive efficiency per Lacrosse Reference — then that’s probably good news for the Golden Eagles.

Anthony Wilson took over in net for Denis Fargione as of the Lehigh game, and he’s been The Guy since. Since Fargione is not the guy who played the final four minutes in the blowout against St. John’s, I’m presuming that Wilson got the job due to injury. The senior from Maryland has been somewhere between solid and strong, giving up just 9.57 goals per 60 minutes and stopping just short of 55% of shots on goal. With 15 saves against 10 allowed in the Providence game, it’s hard to pin much of the collapse against the Friars on Wilson, but we have to note that he didn’t come up with the saves in critical moments to close PC out last weekend.

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