The Boston University women’s lacrosse team secured a 17-8 victory over Lafayette Saturday afternoon, with junior midfielder Elle Stevenson and sophomore attack Izabella Amonte each scoring four goals.
Despite relatively even splits in caused turnovers and draw controls, the Terriers (7-3, 2-1 Patriot League) outshot the Leopards (4-5, 0-2 PL) 32-23, 24 of those shots on target.
47 seconds after the opening draw, junior defender Leah Hodgins found senior attack Hannah Tillier for the early advantage.
Despite Lafayette evening the score a minute later, the Terriers surged ahead later in the period, adding two goals within two minutes.
BU continued to dominate as junior midfielder Jayne Feeney beat senior goalkeeper Molly Terraciano, then Stevenson made it 5-1 15 seconds later.
“Starting strong was really important for us,” said head coach Lauren Morton. “We have talked a lot about just how important this conference game was, so for us being able to come out strong and to convert in transition and start to limit them defensively was a huge piece of our focus.”
The Leopards got one back with their first free possession shot of the game in the early minutes of the second quarter.
Lafayette midfielder Olivia Hover then cut the lead to two halfway through the period.
“I thought our spacing wasn’t as amazing [in the second period]. We were a little bit flatter in terms of pushing transition and just a little bit careless with some support turnovers,” Morton said.
After going scoreless for 12 minutes of the second, the Terriers managed to score twice on two free position goals from Amonte in the last three minutes of the period.
“[We were] making sure we were dominating all the small parts of the game,” Amonte said. “We wanted to score more, so putting the ball back there and coming up with a lot of defensive stops was the message.”
Each team scored three goals in the third period, starting with Tillier’s second of the game that extended the lead to five.
After back-and-forth scoring, BU held a 10-6 lead heading into the last 15 minutes of play.
The Terriers ran away with the lead in the fourth, Stevenson adding three goals within the quarter on her way to four over the afternoon.
Five different Terriers rippled the net in the fourth as seven scored over the course of the game on the way to the 17-8 statement.
“We hadn’t done as much in the second and the third, so it was really good to see us evolve throughout the fourth quarter,” Morton said.
The Terriers return to Nickerson Field Saturday, looking to extend their three-game winning streak as they take on Navy at noon.
