With its regular season slowly coming to an end, the Boston University women’s lacrosse team will travel to Lafayette College Saturday in what will be its penultimate road game.
Just five regular-season matchups stand between the Terriers (5-6, 3-2 Patriot League) and the postseason. Before it can start thinking about postseason play, BU will try and recover from its heartbreaking 8-7 defeat at the hands of Lehigh University last weekend on Nickerson Field.
The Terriers had a 5-1 halftime lead over the visiting Mountain Hawks (9-2, 3-1 Patriot League) and appeared to have all of the momentum. In a turn of events, Lehigh outscored BU 7-2 in the second half, notching the game-winning goal with just five seconds left in the affair.
BU head coach Liz Robertshaw saw Lehigh come back through persistence and grit, and said her team needs to have those qualities regardless of the scoreline.
“I think they did a good job of coming out with a fighter’s mentality,” Robertshaw said. “It was something that we didn’t match. I think we got a little too comfortable and too complacent with coming out hard and playing a fast first half. The second half, I think we took it a little for granted that Lehigh is a great team and was going to come back and fight us.”
The Terriers’ performance was the latest in what has been a mixed bag of results. BU has notched back-to-back wins just once all season, and the Terriers have had a pattern of wins and losses dating back to early March.
Robertshaw hopes to have her team improve its consistency by playing as a more unified squad.
“I think we have to get back to focusing on us and controlling what we can control,” Robertshaw said. “We’ve come out with a really good fighter’s mentality anytime we’ve lost because we’d be mad about those losses, but then we get a win and take things a little easy. That’s something that as a coaching staff, we have to do a better job of challenging these players to play with standards and not with an opponent or with scoreboards, but to really play to a standard that we believe in.”
When BU steps out onto the field against the Leopards (5-7, 1-3 Patriot League), it will be a matchup of two very similar teams.
Despite having an inferior conference record, Lafayette is just one game behind in the overall loss column and has almost identical stats compared to the Terriers. The Leopards narrowly outscore BU (11.67 goals per game compared to 11.55 gpg) and shots on goal per game are just as close (20.82 to 18.83).
Both teams also boast talented attacks. Lehigh’s duo of Kirsten Wilhelmsen (42 goals) and freshman Emma Novick (28 goals) account for exactly half of their team’s 140 goals. Going toe-to-toe with them will BU sophomore attack Mickenzie Larivee (22 goals) and senior attack Mallory Collins (21 goals).
Robertshaw expects big games from her leading scorers, while relying on her defense to tame the lethal Leopard pairing of Wilhelmsen and Novick.
“We need to keep the ball off their sticks,” Robertshaw said. “First and foremost, they are powerful players. On the draw control, we’re going to really look to battle for the ball and have possession more than Lafayette does.
“The second thing is we have to be very well aware of those two players,” Robertshaw added. “We’re going to have some markups on them and then when they have it, we’re going to make sure we have our eyes to them and try to slow them down.”
