Another One: Marquette 2, North Dakota State 0

Well, it wasn’t quite the fireworks factory that we got in the opener, but the end result was the same: A Marquette women’s soccer victory! Megan Murray scored twice, once early and once late, and when you combine that with a pair of saves from freshman goalie Mia Hurd, you get a 2-0 shutout victory over North Dakota State on Sunday afternoon in Fargo. That moves Marquette to 2-0-0 on the year, which keeps the Golden Eagles on target to try to get to the best start under third year head coach Chris Allen.

In the opener, it was Megan Murray scoring in the fifth minute, a little bit assisted by some wonky defending by St. Thomas on a free kick. This one was a little later, coming in the 10th minute, and it was also a little bit assisted by the defense. The NDSU defender cut off a long boom of a kick down the sideline from Marquette but didn’t see Murray bolting to intercept the lazy back pass to keeper Payton Mulberry.

That goal stood up as the margin at halftime, kind of because the two teams only combined for 10 shots in the first 45 minutes, with one of them as Murray’s shot. Along the way, Mia Hurd made her first collegiate save after not needing to make one to keep St. Thomas off the board.

As the second half went along, the field slowly tilted in Marquette’s favor. The shots after halftime ended up at 9-3 favoring the Golden Eagles, with the Bison tallying their last attempt of the game just past the 70 minute mark. The pressure really kicked up for Marquette in the final 10 minutes, which is neat because that means that they weren’t laying back and trying to run out the clock with a 1-0 lead. Then, in the 85th minute, Megan Murray took up the role of Johnny-On-The-Spot:

Jocelyn Leigh did the heavy lifting there, fighting through traffic, maintaining possession, and firing off a tough turn around shot. As it happens, Mulberry was way off the line as she never retreated far enough back, thinking she might be able to dive on the ball if it popped away from Leigh. It didn’t, she got a bad dive at it and it went past…. to the post. One of the defenders that Leigh fought through finally realized that it was time to go do something, but by that point, Murray had already finished running into position in case something interesting happened. It did happen, and she was there for her third goal in two matches.

How about 2:20ish of highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and Midco Sports Plus? No, it’s not just the two goals.

Up Next: How about a home opener? Marquette will kick off (soccer term) the Valley Fields portion of their schedule on Wednesday afternoon (yes, afternoon) with a 3pm Central time start against Truman State. If you can’t break free from your usual Wednesday afternoon activities, you can stream that one live on ESPN+.

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