On Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. the No. 16 Boston University field hockey team will play its final regular season game before starting play in the conference tournament.
The Terriers (9-8, 3-1, America East) has been focusing on their upcoming game against Fairfield University (9-7, 1-3, America East), who, despite a losing record in conference play, is still a very strong team with a record very similar to BU’s.
“We respect them as a team,” Starr said. “We’re looking forward to going down there and being successful against Fairfield.”
Stag back Felicitas Heinen has been a strong force for Fairfield, both defensively and offensively, and her six goals on the season place her second in total goals scored for the team. This week she was named America East Rookie of the Week for the second time this season.
Forward Marit Westenberg leads the Stags with seven goals on the season, and it will be the job of the BU defense to stop both her and Heinen as they work to regain their momentum after last week’s difficult 4-1 defeat at Northeastern University.
Starr sees defense as one of the Terriers greatest strengths.
“I think we play very good team defense,” Starr said. “We’ve really been successful at pressing this year. Taking other teams out of their comfort zone.”
Fairfield is not as strong offensively as many of the teams the Terriers have faced this season as they average only 1.38 goals per game and have scored only 22 goals this season.
The Terriers on the other hand have scored 40 goals this season and have held their opponents to 26.
Despite this, Starr still feels the team could improve offensively.
“[We’re] struggling with scoring goals,” Starr said. “We need to do a better job getting the ball in the net. ”
All season the Terriers have struggled with capitalizing on scoring opportunities. Despite their strong attack and passing game, delivering on scoring opportunities has been something that has plagued the team all season.
Coming off of a difficult week with multiple away games, BU has been fighting off exhaustion and took full advantage of the two days off from practice they had at the beginning of this week. The team can now look forward to the last game of the season well rested and fully ready to play.
“It is our last regular season game, I think that it’s very important that it helps prepare us for our conference tournament,” Starr said. “We can go into the end of the season conference tournament with momentum.”
In practice, the Terriers have been focusing on their attacking game and their passing game, as well as working on revitalizing the defense after a difficult loss this past weekend.
Another thing the team has been focusing on is attacking penalty corners, something Starr believes the team has steadily improved at over the course of the season. She sees these penalty corners as one of the team’s greatest strengths.
“Our attack penalty corners have gotten really good,” Starr said. “We can score the power goal. We have both trickery and power on our attack penalty corners.”
Even though victory is still incredibly important to the Terriers, unless University of New Hampshire (14-3, 4-0, America East) loses to Albany, the Terriers will remain in second place in the conference.
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