Detroit Faces #17 Marquette in Louisville

An unbeaten will face off against destiny as they look to continue on the road towards perfection in week four of the 2015 NCAA Division I Men’s Lacrosse season. Detroit (2-1 Overall, 0-0 in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference) takes on nationally ranked #17 Marquette (3-0 Overall, 0-0 in the Big East) in Louisville, KY for a neutral site tournament. Marquette has played all three of its games tightly winning by one goal each in the first three contests of the year while Detroit won last week’s game versus Robert Morris in overtime 11-10.

Detroit is coming off a mixed bag of success and failure last season, as they went 6-8 in the regular season, including a 3-3 record in their conference.  Nevertheless, they qualified for the conference tournament but lost in the semifinals to #2 ranked Marist 11-9.

Marquette on the other hand had success in the Big East last season finishing 4-2 in the conference but failing to capitalize on that success by going a combined 2-8 the rest of the season finishing 6-10 overall.

Marquette is averaging 10.67 goals so far this season on 34 shots averaged per game while Richmond averages 9 goals per game on 30 shots. Opponents are winning 66 percent of
face-offs against Detroit putting them at a disadvantage of possession to begin the game while Marquette holds possession 52% of the time to start the game. Detroit turns the ball over eight times more than league average while Marquette tends to keep possession of the ball better. This indicates an advantage on the offense for Marquette.

Star players for both sides include Mark Anstead for Detroit who has five goals so far this season and Jordan Greenfield who has 10 goals for Marquette, pacing their high powered, quick attack offense. Jason Weber, the Detroit goalie saves an average of .587 percent of shots against him while Jimmy Danaher of Marquette saves .540 percent of shots, giving a slight advantage to Detroit here.

The game promises to be entertaining with two highly disciplined and quality teams duking it out to see who continues on the road of perfection towards an undefeated season and who gets reduced to imperfection and who has to fight through a tough schedule to bring their team to the promised land of the playoffs weeks down the line.