This weekend’s games served as a mixed bag for the Boston University field hockey team, as a 3-2 loss to No. 5 Syracuse University dropped the team down to No. 17 in the national rankings. Despite a strong 3-0 victory against the University of Massachusetts on Friday, the Terriers could not keep up the momentum against the Orange on Sunday.
Extending their win streak against UMass (2-6) to nine games, the Terriers (5-4) 3-0 victory marked another strong performance by the team in a win that BU coach Sally Starr calls “a team victory” in which “everyone played well. [There were] lots of great play off the bench.”
The team scored for the first time with less than four minutes left in the first half, with a goal by junior forward/midfielder Tabi Hatch. Hatch would go on to score another goal, her fourth of the season, with about five minutes left in regulation time.
Assists by sophomore midfielders Kat Spring and Madeline Hackett proved key to Hatch’s success against the UMass defense. Senior midfielder Giovanna Monaco scored the Terriers’ second goal 56 minutes into the game. The goal was her first of the season.
“What I really liked about the UMass game was that we moved the ball very well,” Starr said of the weekend’s games. We were transferring the field very successfully, which gets UMass scrambling around.
“Our passing game, particularly in the second half, was excellent.”
The Terriers’ defense, led by junior goaltender Jess Maroney, proved effective in completely shutting down the Minutewomen’s offense. Despite early offensive pushes by UMass, Maroney recorded six saves in the shutout.
Senior Kate Murphy, who Starr described as “having a great weekend,” led the Terrier’s defense.
Despite a 1-1 tie score going into the half, the Terriers were unable to secure a victory in Sunday’s afternoon game against Syracuse (7-2), which proved far more disappointing to the team as it suffered a 3-2 loss to the highly ranked Big East Conference team. Syracuse outshot the Terriers 22-4.
A first half goal by sophomore forward Amira Downes kept BU in the game during the first half, but they ultimately fell behind when Syracuse scored two goals in rapid succession during the opening minutes of the second half.
For Starr, it was the “first five minutes of the second half” that proved problematic for the Terriers. “For me, a big pivotal change was the first five to seven minutes [of the second half].”
It was in these minutes that Syracuse forwards Kelsey Millman and Heather Susek continued their offensive streaks, scoring two goals only seven seconds apart.
After these goals the Terriers’ defense played well, continuing its strong play during penalty corners, something Starr believes is incredibly important to keep up.
Put in with almost 30 minutes left in the game, freshman goalkeeper Valentina Cerda recorded 10 saves. Her strong play was not enough to save the Terriers, whose only other goal came at the hands of junior midfielder Macey Gaumond, whose seven goals lead the Terriers.
This BU goal came after the referees awarded junior midfielder Nicole von Oosterom a yellow card that Starr described as “unwarranted,” forcing the team to play down a player for the remaining 10 minutes.
Starr said she was very impressed with her team’s play during those final minutes.
“We were playing short, I was very proud of our team’s resiliency,” Starr said. “The goal we scored to make 3-2 was a short-handed goal.
“We were able to get a short-handed goal, which isn’t an easy thing to do.”
It was this resiliency that Star believed served the Terriers well in the difficult contest against Syracuse.
“The speed of the play was higher; you got to be better on the ball,” Starr said of Sunday’s game. “Less space and time to make decisions. Syracuse is one of the best teams in the Big East.
“We can compete better against them than we did today.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
