Women's Soccer Wins At Pittsburgh, 2-1

Oct. 26, 2007

INDIANOLA, Pa. - The Marquette women's soccer team secured the No. 3 seed in the BIG EAST Tournament after defeating Pittsburgh Friday night, 2-1. Senior Allison Mallams and sophomore Michelle Compty netted goals for the Golden Eagles who improve to 12-2-4 overall and 5-2-3 in BIG EAST play.

The No. 3 seed also gives MU a first round bye in the tournament and the Golden Eagles will wait to play at the No. 2 seed of the National Division on Sunday, Nov. 4, in the quarterfinals. Louisville and Georgetown will fight for the No. 2 seed on Sunday, Oct. 28. Should the game end in a tie, Marquette will play at Louisville. It is the third straight season the Golden Eagles have earned a first-round bye in the BIG EAST Tournament.

"This is what we worked towards," said head coach Markus Roeders. " It was a big night for us. We came out here wanting to get the win and the first round bye, and accomplished our goal. We have gotten a first round bye now for three seasons and I think that shows we are one of the elite teams in the league."

For the game, the two teams kept it even as each took 11 shots, however, MU put eight on goal to Pitt's five. Five of Marquette's strikes on target came in the first half. Senior goalkeeper Laura Boyer gave up one goal, but made four stops during the 90-minute outing. Pitt's keeper Morie Kephart, in her third start of the season, made six saves.

Marquette quickly found itself in Panther territory early and senior Christy Zwolski launched two shots on goal in the first minute-and-a-half of the game. Shortly after Marquette finished its third opportunity at the 9:31 mark. Sophomore Brittany Bares placed a nice serve to Compty who battled in the air to put the ball in far post.

"Compty did a great job getting to that ball from Brittany's serve. All-around we played a very solid first half. We got a couple of opportunities very early and we dominated play," Roeders said.

Marquette recorded the second goal of the game to go ahead 2-0 one minute and 35 seconds into the second half when senior Christy Zwolski found Mallams in front of the net. Zwolski turned on her defender, dribbled and dished the ball off to Mallams who one-timed it out of reach for Kephart.

The goal was Mallams' fourth in the last three games.

Pitt attempted a come back in the second half firing off eight shots. The Panthers managed to score their lone goal of the game late in the 88th minute as Jennifer Kritch tapped one past Boyer on the right side with her head.

"We switched things up a bit during the second half and lost our flow a bit. Our defense played very well tonight. We may have not created as many opportunities, but I thought we were very threatening," said Roeders.

The Golden Eagles had strong fan support in Indianola as the Marquette volleyball team came out to support its fellow student-athletes before its match at Pitt on Saturday.

"It was really special for us to have the volleyball team out supporting us tonight. It gave us sort of a home field advantage and they really cheered us on to victory," Roeders added.

Marquette will play its regular season finale at No. 19/23 West Virginia on Sunday at Noon CT.