Tomiwa Adewumi Saves The Day

· Yahoo Sports

What can’t Tomiwa Adewumi do? | Credit: Marquette University

When Christian Rotundo got to the back end of a Southern Indiana corner kick in the 8th minute of Saturday’s Marquette men’s soccer match, the vibes were pretty bad for the Golden Eagles.

I can tell that ball bounced, I’m not sure if it bounced before or after Rotundo made contact with it. Either way, the entire thing was poorly defended by Marquette since Rotundo had all that space to make the play. That’s not a great sign for Marquette, given their general malaise at points this season, and that’s got an extra layer of “Southern Indiana came in winless in four matches this year” on top of it.

When Tomiwa Adewumi subbed out in the 17th minute after going down and being slow to even sit up or react, that was a bad sign for the Golden Eagles as well. Adewumi came into the game with five goals in MU’s six matches this season, so clearly having him just on the field at all is beneficial to their production.

That 1-0 margin held til halftime even though Marquette was outshooting Southern Indiana 5-2 after 45 minutes and the Screaming Eagles hadn’t even attempted an official shot in the final 29 of those. The clock started ticking, and the Golden Eagles had managed just one shot in the second half as things rolled past the hour mark. Again: A bad sign for a team that’s struggled to put things together well this season against a team that hadn’t picked up a win yet in four tries. When USI keeper Jacob English started stringing together tremendous saves, that really started to make it feel like it was just going to go the way of the visiting team… and then English did this out on the perimeter.

Just mistimed the entire proceedings, running out to the edge to challenge Adewumi — who had subbed back into the match in the 59th minute, so good to see he was okay and his fresh legs clearly played a role in what was about to happen — and then English got unlucky that Adewumi was able to corral the ball and slot it into the unattended net.

And so, after all that, 1-1. With just a shade over 21 minutes left. Can Marquette build on the USI error and find a winner or… nope, Gabe Watkins just got red carded out of the match for a heavy tackle in the 73rd minute. Okay, new question, can the shorthanded Golden Eagles hold the line and preserve the tie…

Nope, they botch a clearance in the 80th minute and essentially just straight up feed Garrett Morris for a goal. It is worth noting, particularly relative to the headline here, that MU keeper Cameron Simpson did not make a single save in this match. No judgement here really, USI managed just seven shots by the time this ended and you’ve now already seen both of their shots on goal.

Okay, so now Marquette’s trailing AND down a man AND there’s just a touch over 10 minutes left to play. That’s bad news.

Or at least it would be bad news if Tomiwa Adewumi wasn’t here.

Did he get lucky here, because he needed the USI deflection to shoot in his direction, and did he have to outplay two defenders to get the ball and a third to get the shot off before beating English? Okay, maybe the luck was really just in the deflection since the rest is all great play by him, but fractions of an inch one way or another and Adewumi doesn’t have a chance to even shoot, much less possess the ball.

Now it’s 2-2 and there’s just over five minutes left. Now we can go back to figuring out if the shorthanded Golden Eagles can battle their way to the finish line and secure the draw. MU draws a free kick from about 30 yards out in the 87th minute, and the referee goes to VAR for some reason, but nothing changes. Mateo Stoka lofts the kick in the general direction of the net… but the whistle sounds while the ball is in the air. The referee has noticed Tristan Ronnestad-Stevens getting dragged to the ground while following Stoka’s kick, and he has called for A PENALTY KICK.

VAR doesn’t change anyone’s mind on the call, and GUESS WHO GETS TO TAKE THE PK? Hell yeah, we’re letting Adewumi fire away.

That’s rough for English, as it appears that he guessed correctly and got there in time… except his hands weren’t right, and he deflected Adewumi’s ninth shot on goal of the season into the net for his eighth goal of the year.

No, I’m not kidding. He’s 8 for 9 now.

The match was STILL not over, as USI got two more shots off on either side of a corner kick, but finally, thankfully, the clock got to 90 and that was that.

SHEESH. Three goals by Tomiwa Adewumi, all in the final 22 minutes of the match, all when Marquette very much needed them to pull the squad out of the fire.

Because you’re probably wondering: As of Saturday morning, there was a three-way tie atop the Big East for goals this season at 6. We’ll see what things look like when the leaderboards are updated later, but Tomiwa Adewumi very well might be out in front of everyone else now.

How about some highlights, courtesy of GoMarquette.com and ESPN+?

Up Next: Things get MUCH MUCH harder for Marquette. They’re 5-1-1 on the year, yes, but the one loss is to the lone ranked team they faced and that match was very lopsided. That matters because Big East play starts next week Friday, and the Golden Eagles start things off with #4 Georgetown. First kick is set for 6pm Central time on the road in Washington, D.C., and ESPN+ will have the broadcast. The Hoyas are 5-1-1 on the year and are coming off a 5-1 win against #25 High Point on Friday night.

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