The Denver Men’s Lacrosse team outclassed the Marquette Golden Eagles in front of a sold-out crowd on parents’ weekend, cruising to a 16-8 victory. In fact, the 2,969-person crowd was the second-most attended game of all time at Peter Barton Lacrosse Stadium. This was the final regular-season game for DU, who improved their record to 9-5 and now have their focus set on the postseason.
After Marquette opened the scoring, Denver responded in a big way, scoring seven unanswered goals, with senior attacker Johnny Marrocco (Cincinnati, Ohio) and graduate senior midfielder Ted Sullivan (Tucson, Ariz.) leading the charge scoring two goals each in that span. After Marquette finally got back on the board, Denver went back to dominating, scoring three more unanswered goals. They took a commanding 10-3 lead into halftime, which they would not relinquish.
After an uneventful third quarter, Marquette was on the comeback trail in the fourth, scoring five of the first six goals of the quarter to cut the DU lead to 13-8. Denver would respond with three straight goals to end the game and stop the Golden Eagles’ rally in its tracks.
A big story of the night was graduate senior midfielder Jack Hannah’s (Milford, Ohio) race towards history, as he chased his 100th career goal. When Hannah scored his third goal of the night in the fourth quarter, he became the fastest midfielder in program history to do so accomplishing the feat in only 55 games.
Scoring depth has been a key part of Denver’s success this season, and Friday’s performance kept with that theme. Nine different players scored a goal for DU, marking the fourth straight game that at least nine players have gotten on the board for the Crimson and Gold.
DU will go into the Big East tournament as the second seed and will face Villanova in the semifinals on Thursday, May 5. If they get past Villanova, they will meet the winner of the other semifinal matchup between Marquette and Georgetown on Saturday, May 7. Georgetown handed Denver their only Big East loss this season and is the number one seed. They are ranked second in the nation.
