After a stretch of five consecutive road contests, the Boston University women’s lacrosse team will return to Nickerson Field on Saturday to take on Patriot League foe Bucknell University.
Playing at home for the first time since their season-opening 18-9 loss at the hands of No. 16 Boston College Feb. 12, the Terriers (2-4, 1-0 Patriot League) are gunning for their first home victory of the season.
Since that frigid weekday defeat against the Eagles (5-3), BU head coach Liz Robertshaw said she has seen her team play a lot more lacrosse and notices the vast differences in the quality of her team’s play.
“We’re a highly different team [now] than we were back in February,” Robertshaw said. “We have a month under our belts, we’ve played six games and I just think you’re seeing a team now that feels more comfortable on the field playing with each other. I think it’s a really great thing.”
Following that BC encounter, the Terriers have found an offensive rhythm and have developed a stifling defense. BU has posted double-digit score totals in all but one of its five subsequent games and in two of those games held its opponents to single digits.
“We feed better, we are more attacking and engaged and taking better shots,” Robertshaw said. “Our defense has really worked to become a great unit, and our goaltenders both have a lot of confidence.”
A particularly noteworthy performance that Robertshaw singled out was her team’s effort last week against No. 19 Johns Hopkins University.
Despite a 13-12 loss in which the Terriers clawed back to level the score at 12 apiece late into the second half, Robertshaw saw her squad work rigorously for 60 minutes as a cohesive unit.
“Our defense did some really great things,” Robertshaw said. “The fact that we could get the ball back within the last minute in a stall break when we were down by one was impressive. I really liked seeing some of the attacking presence of our attacking unit. We had people taking shots, going hard to the cage and I think there was a ‘never quit’ attitude, and I’m really proud of this team for [that].”
In the upcoming matchup with the Bison (6-2), a team that averages 14.38 goals scored per game, BU will need to focus on defense.
Along with the goal-scoring duo of sophomore Eve Lukowski (20 goals) and junior Maddy Molinari (23 goals), Bucknell possesses four other players that have scored at least 10 goals this season.
Like in previous matchups against teams with talented attackers, Robertshaw made it clear that her side needs to keep the ball out of Bucknell’s sticks to prevent it from developing any sort of offensive rhythm.
“We need to make sure the ball is on our stick more than it’s in theirs,” Robertshaw said. “We’ll work on draw controls, our attacking unit making sure that we maintain possession and get some great shots on cage and then our defenders. We have to do a good job of being aware of those two players.”
Instead of singling out a specific Terrier that needs a breakout performance, Robertshaw emphasized that her team must play as one to best the Bison.
“We need everyone to be goal-scorers,” Robertshaw said. “I don’t need one person to have four goals and one person to have five goals. I need seven goal-scoring middies and attackers, so no matter who’s on the field, we need to make sure we’re a threat and that we’re present and that we’re attacking hard. They score a lot of goals, and we need to make sure we combat that on our offensive end and really go to take charge. Take a lot of chances and put the ball in the back of the net.”
