It wasn’t a pretty win, but it didn’t have to be, because the Boston University women’s lacrosse team extended its winning streak to five games and captured an important victory over the University of Vermont. The 16-7 win yesterday afternoon at Nickerson Field was the 21st game in a row BU has won at home.
And you wouldn’t expect it to be pretty after two days off from practice — which is exactly what BU coach Liza Kelly pointed out after the game.
“I think that’s two days off,” she said. “I think that we played like we had two days off and Marathon Monday around the corner, so I think that we were definitely sluggish today.”
Despite the lack of energy, the Terriers (11-3, 3-1 America East) still managed to score 16 times against Vermont (5-8, 0-4), as sophomore Jenny Hauser and senior Mary Beth Miller combined for 11 points.
Hauser got things going very early as she took the ball off the draw control, sprinted downfield and beat Vermont goalkeeper Meaghan Hanley only 0:08 seconds into the contest. Hauser would end up tallying two assists after that and scoring thrice more, giving her a total of 54 goals on the season thus far. By recording six points on the afternoon, Hauser passed both her goal (54) and point (70) totals from last year and is now just 13 points shy of tying the BU single-season record. Despite the six-point effort, Kelly felt like something was off in Hauser’s game.
“I thought she had a little bit of an inconsistent day today,” Kelly said. “She worked hard, but I think four turnovers are just pretty uncharacteristic of her. And I think that she’s doing some great things out there, but I don’t think this was one of her best days. But hopefully she has many more good days in her.”
Miller added a score just 14 seconds after Hauser’s first and found the back of the net again with 15 seconds left in the opening frame. Miller also added three assists, as she continues to build on her all-time record of dishing out dimes at BU. Senior tri-captain Lindsay Lewis also recorded a hat trick for the Terriers.
On the defensive side of the ball, BU was a little shaky. Even though the Terriers only allowed seven goals, BU defenders committed 35 fouls and did not seem to be running as the fine-tuned machine it usually is. Fortunately for the Terriers, both sophomore Jenna Golden and senior Colleen McClay stopped 12 of the 19 Catamounts shots on goal to save BU on multiple occasions.
Golden made seven saves in the first half, before McClay entered her sixth contest of the season and made five stops.
“I thought both goalies played well. I’ll leave it at that,” Kelly said, upset with her defense. “I mean, we had 35 fouls, that’s not a good defensive day. I think that we just really need to step up our defense but I was happy that the goalies played well.”
Meanwhile, the Catamounts’ struggles continued. The loss was their seventh straight after starting the season with a promising 4-1 mark. Leading the way for Vermont yesterday afternoon was freshman Becky Kenison, who scored four goals to up her season total to 31.
Despite Kenison’s efforts, the Terriers never trailed in the game. And that’s certainly a feeling they’ve gotten used to – it’s happened in six of their 14 games this season. The Catamounts did keep it close when they cut the Terrier advantage to 4-3, but BU scored five of the final six goals of the first frame to head into halftime leading, 9-4.
Five straight BU goals from Molly Collins, Caryn Lean, Hauser (2) and Sarah Dalton to start the second half put the game out of reach for Vermont.
BU finished with a 37-23 edge in shots and a 25-19 advantage in ground balls, while Vermont won the battle for draw controls, 14-11.
Even though the Terriers came away with the win, they certainly aren’t peaking yet. But that’s not a bad thing.
“I think last year our best game was the America East Championship game, which in the past had been kinda perfect — that was exactly where you want to be,” Kelly said. “So I’m hoping that we can get it past that point this season and take it into the NCAAs.”
And even though the league win is very important to the season’s progress and the Terriers’ quest for an America East Championship, BU isn’t ecstatic about knocking Vermont out of contention.
“Well, no,” Kelly said. “They’re a nice team and I like their coach. I’m more concerned about getting us there.”
