On a historic day for senior co-captain Sarah Dalton, the No. 12 Boston University lacrosse team captured its third-straight victory Saturday, defeating Harvard University, 17-12. In front of a home crowd at Nickerson Field, Dalton tied and then broke the Terriers’ record for career goals with her 187th and 188th scores, followed by three more tallies later in the game.
Aside from Dalton’s strong performance, junior McKinley Curro had a big day of her own, notching five goals and three assists ‘-‘- the highest point total of her career.
‘[Curro] was great yesterday,’ BU coach Liz Robertshaw said. ‘Compared to years past, she’s been strong in the preseason and all through the season, giving us those three, four and now an eight-point game. She’s been great with her stickwork and going strong to the cage. I need her to keep that going, though. I’m expecting her to continue that type of performance the rest of the season.’
Within the game’s first five minutes, Curro hit three free-possession goals to put the Terriers (5-3) up 3-0, a lead they would never relinquish. The Crimson (3-4) fought back with goals by freshman Tyler Petropolous and senior Kaitlin Martin to bring the score to 3-2 before Dalton hit her record-tying goal with 9:38 left in the first half.
The two teams then traded pairs of goals until Dalton struck again with 1:12 left in the half for her record-breaking 188th goal, and she added another just 21 seconds later to give the Terriers an 8-4 lead at halftime.
For most of the first half, the Terriers kept a fairly slow pace with a lot of passing, especially when the team went a player down after sophomore Corcoran Downey’s first-half yellow card.
‘We tried to work the ball around more,’ Robertshaw said. ‘Attacking-wise, we wanted to take some time off the clock after the yellow card. We also had some new players in, so we wanted to give them a chance to see Harvard’s zone defense and figure it out.’
In the second half, Curro picked up right where she left off, scoring unassisted just over a minute into the half. But Harvard’s leading scorer, sophomore Jess Halpern tried her best to keep the Crimson in the game as she scored five second-half goals, all unassisted.’
‘We let in too many goals,’ Robertshaw said. ‘We need to take better possession times. If we’re pushing a fast break, we need to take good shots, not just [any] shot, because they then would turn our misses into quick goals for them. As we get into conference play, I don’t want our opponents taking that many shots and scoring that many goals.’
BU’s goalie, junior Rachel Klein, had seven saves to give her a .367 save percentage on the day, far worse than her season average of only .418. Still, the Terriers’ offense did enough to come away with the victory. Freshman midfielder Hannah Frey continued her impressive season, scoring two second-half goals, and junior attacker Traci Landy added two second-half goals of her own.
After Petropolous and Halpern tried to mount a Crimson comeback late in the game, scoring three goals to bring the score to 16-11, Jenny Taft added the dagger for the Terriers, netting the team’s 17th goal with three minutes left in the game.
The Terriers have finished their non-conference schedule and will begin conference play on Saturday with a home game against the University at Albany at 1 p.m.
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