Christina Sheridan made 13 saves and stopped 7-of-8 free-position attempts in the Terriers’ losing effort in an overtime game against UMBC.
While suffering a tough overtime loss to University of Maryland-Baltimore County was certainly a tough pill for the Boston University women’s lacrosse team to swallow, perhaps the toughest takeaway from the game was the injury to senior defender Monica Baumgartner.
Halfway through the first half of Saturday’s game, Baumgartner went down with what appeared to be a knee or leg injury. She remained on the field for over five minutes, eventually leaving in an ambulance.
Despite the apparent severity of the injury, BU coach Liz Robertshaw still had no official word on Baumgartner’s injury.
“I know that she’s seeing our team physicians today, and we should know more tentatively throughout the week,” Robertshaw said. “Right now, we’re just … having her see the doctors, getting some MRIs and getting some looks at her leg and knee.”
While losing Baumgartner — who started 15 games and was named to the America East All-Tournament Team last season — will likely be a significant blow to the Terriers (2-5, 0-1 America East), Robertshaw said the team’s defensive depth will help it overcome any injuries.
“From a leadership and experience standpoint, it’s going to be tough, because she has such great presence out there,” Robertshaw said. “But [freshman defender] Remy Nolan did a great job against UMBC and just picked up where [Baumgartner] left off.
“We have [Nolan] and we also have [redshirt freshman defender] Lindy Firstenberg, who’s gearing up and getting ready to play as well.
“As a defensive unit, it’s something that we’ve preached for awhile, so they know that they have to collectively play solid defense, so it’s going to be something that we work on … We just have to keep moving on, just like what we had to with [sophomore attack] Mallory Collins.”
Lack of experience responsible for offensive struggles
After only scoring six goals in Saturday’s loss to UMBC (7-2, 1-0 America East), Robertshaw said the team needed to work on offense in practice this week.
Robertshaw was quick to point out the team’s abundance of young players on attack as part of the reason for the team’s recent offensive woes.
“Part of it is a lack of experience,” Robertshaw said. “If you take [senior attack] Danielle Etrasco and [senior midfielder] Kristen Mogavero out of the mix, you don’t have a lot of returning experience for us.
“Some of the players have been trying to hide themselves, and we’ve called them out and told them that they need to step up and play to the level that we need them to play to win games.”
Robertshaw said challenging the team’s younger players in practice will be instrumental in building effectiveness and trust on attack.
“Today at practice, we challenged all of our attackers to make plays, and to take harder charges to cage, and stop worrying about making mistakes, and instead allow their teammates to back them up if they take a challenge to cage,” Robertshaw said.
At this point in the season, BU ranks sixth out of seven America East teams in goals per game (9.71).
Sheridan Stepping Up For BU
Lost in BU’s matchup against UMBC was the great play of junior goalkeeper Christina Sheridan. Sheridan finished the game with 13 saves and held the Retrievers to just 1-of-8 on free-position attempts.
Sheridan is fourth amongst America East goalkeepers in save percentage (.473).
Robertshaw praised Sheridan’s play, both in Saturday’s game and on the season.
“She’s playing great,” Robertshaw said. “After [Saturday’s] game, I told her to hold her head up … She has given us a lot of opportunities down in the attacking end by making huge saves.
“The way that she’s playing right now allows our defense to be more aggressive … She just makes saves. “
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