With the close win over UW-Milwaukee, Marquette put itself in position to get that 2nd place spot in the GMW North. And they did it in front of a big crowd.
"It was awesome to see so many fans out there from both teams," said Marquette's Ben Chejfec. "There had to be at least 500 people in attendance, which made for an incredible atmosphere. And it was a really fun game."
Marquette probably had the run of play early, but UWM took the lead in the second half, only for Marquette to come back to win it.
"It was especially impressive given that we were dealing with several injuries and had about four starters missing from the lineup," said Chejfec. "It was great to see some of our younger guys step up.
"Our guys responded with a strong comeback and competed all the way through to secure the win. I was really proud of how they stepped into bigger roles."
No. 8 Graham Pierce and hooker Declan O’Malley were key leaders for the Golden Eagles and kept them on-task in a dramatic tree-point win.
In the GMW South, UChicago is still comfortably in charge after beating Loyola last week. They defeated Benedictine 53-14 this week and once again Caius Michlitsch with No. 8 Jack Allison and lock Sebastian Villamil both scoring two. freshman flyhalf Henry McGowan added 13 points.
With Northwestern unfortunately forfeiting this coming weekend, Chicago will be 4-0 and can wrap up an unbeaten regular-season in-conference run with a win over UIC on Saturday.
So almost certainly Chicago will host a quarterfinal match, as will Loyola, while in the North UNI should also since they are 4-0. The question remains whether UWM or Marquette also gets that home quarterfinal. As we said, Milwaukee visits Northern Iowa thins coming weekend, while Marquette faces winless Northern Illinois.
