Women’s soccer dominates Bucknell, earns third straight win

The Boston University women’s soccer team, fresh off a 2-0 win over Providence College, picked up right where it left off Sunday, handily beating Bucknell University by a score of 4-0 at Nickerson Field. The Terriers finished their three-game homestand in style as they earned their third straight win.

BU (3-4-2, 1-0 Patriot League), in its first Patriot League match of the year, put together its best performance of the season so far. The Terriers limited the Bison (4-4-1, 0-1 Patriot League) to only three shots the whole game, while they generated 14 shots on Bucknell goalie Jessica Ratner. BU coach Nancy Feldman said she was pleased with her team’s effort.

“It was pretty complete,” Feldman said. “We started well, we had good tempo in attack, we did a good job after the first five minutes of kind of keeping the play in their half of the field. We started the second half well, and we didn’t do that the other night, we kind of had to get the game back. [Today] we kept our pedal to the metal a little bit and continued to put our stamp on the game and dictate it and really separate ourselves today.

“[Bucknell is] a good team that gets a lot of shots. That’s a team that has a lot of good attacking personalities and is disciplined defensively,” she added. “We had a very strong consistent performance and kept playing the way we want to play without losing our way, there was a good level of discipline in this game.”

From the start of the game, the Terriers attacked early and often, creating several offensive opportunities and tiring out the Bucknell defense. BU finally broke through in the 28th minute, when freshman midfielder Dorrie Varley-Barrett sent a cross into the box that Ratner deflected. However, the ball landed at junior forward Erica Kosienski’s feet, and she put the ball in the back of the net with ease.

Less than three minutes later, Kosienski brought the ball into the box and took a shot, which Ratner again got a hand on. But Kosienski tracked down the rebound and scored her second goal of the day. Feldman commented on how important Kosienski’s performance was to the victory.

“She is a goal-scorer [and] you want to get a goal-scorer on track,” Feldman said of Kosienski. “It’s good for us and makes Erica feel good that she’s doing her job because she takes it personally that [scoring] is her responsibility to this team. When you can get a goal-scorer not to press because they feel like every time they touch the ball they are going to get a goal, it is powerful. I’m hoping for her that she now feels freer and builds her confidence because she’s a heck of a goal-scorer.”

Once the second half began, it was more of the same for the Terriers. Just six minutes into the half, freshman defender Chelsea Churchill shot the ball from 25 yards out and put it in the top left corner of the net to extend BU’s lead to three. Twenty-one minutes after Churchill’s tally, sophomore defender Erin Neville topped Churchill’s shot, scoring from 35 yards away on a beautiful strike to put the game away. The goals were both Churchill and Neville’s first at the collegiate level.

Not to be outdone by the impressive offensive showing, the defense completely contained Bucknell, a team which led the Patriot League in shots per game with 16.6 before this game. Whenever the Bison managed to get the ball in scoring territory, the Terrier defense quickly ended any scoring chance and took care of business. Feldman has noticed her team getting better at defense with each game.

“Just like we had done against Providence [College] and Hofstra [University], we tried to defend in [Bucknell’s] half as much as possible,” Feldman said. “You can’t defend them if they established possession in our back third, so the goal is not to let them have possession in our back third. That’s how you control a team that gets a lot of shots and has a lot of good attacking players.

“I make it an emphasis for the players to commit to that [defense]. They know what we want, but it’s up to them to commit to defending. It’s not all about magic on the ball. If you can win more balls in the forward and middle thirds, you [have] less to go and you’re breaking the other team a little bit because they aren’t doing what they want to do. It’s hard not to get discouraged and to be able to stay persistent when you feel like you’re chasing the ball all the time. Our kids are committing to it, and it’s a good sign.”