1-0: Marquette 17, Lindenwood 2

Well, you know, there’s always questions to be asked about a season opener. Has the team figured out how to play together after lineup changes from last season, how will they be impacted by playing against a team that they have no tape of from this season, in this particular case we get to ask what it means to face a Division 2 NCAA tournament team making the jump up to Division 1.

Questions, questions, questions, when will we get the answers, or at least answers enough for this one game.

Bobby O’Grady decided to answer all of the questions in the first quarter and get National Marquette Day off to a hot start.

The Marquette men’s lacrosse sophomore star attackman opened up the scoring at the 10:31 mark of the first quarter, and by the time that the full first 15 minutes were gone, he had scored four times, including twice with a man advantage, and Marquette was up 7-1. Your final in the Valley, Marquette 17, Lindenwood 2. MU moves to 1-0 as this was the season opener for the 2023 season, the Lions drop to 0-1 as a Division 1 team.

The name of the game was precision. If you just look at raw shots, this game was close, including tied at 10 each at the end of the first quarter. Again, Marquette was up 7-1 while dead even on shots with Lindenwood. The difference? Nine of Marquette’s shots were on cage, and that’s a big reason why seven of them went in. Lindenwood managed to put six on frame..... but they would get just five more on target for the rest of the game and absolutely none of them came in the second quarter. End of game, MU led 40-30 in shots, but it was 24-11 in shots on goal.

Bobby O’Grady finished with six goals and an assist for a team high in goals and points on the day, although fellow attackman Jake Stegman’s five point day (2G, 3A) wasn’t that far behind him. Jackson Rose tallied twice in his Marquette debut, while freshman Andrew Bowman found the back of the net twice in his collegiate debut. Goalie Michael Allieri played all but the final seven minutes, making eight saves for his first win of the season.

There’s not a lot to break down here, so let’s just go straight to the highlights — and there’s a lot of them — courtesy of GoMarquette.com and FloSports:

Up Next: Well, that was Marquette’s only home game until mid-March. Their next four are all on the road, including next Saturday. That one will be out in Salt Lake City as MU visits Utah. The Utes played Denver in their opener on Saturday, and took at 12-4 loss on the road against noted Big East foe #17 Denver. Utah did go 10-4 last season and won the ASun regular season title. They were earning preseason votes in the Inside Lacrosse media poll, but I presume those will dry up between now and first draw in the mountains on Saturday.