Lacrosse, Sports

Lacrosse to face the struggling Crimson

The No.11/12 Boston University lacrosse team will try to end its first losing streak of the season today as they cross the river for a matchup with Harvard University in Cambridge. The Terriers are coming off a southern road trip during which they incurred two straight losses to then-No. 5/6 Duke University and No. 18 Vanderbilt University by the scores 10-6 and 10-5, respectively.

One of the first things the Terriers (3-2 America East) will look to fix today against the Crimson (2-2 Ivy) is their decreased offensive output. After scoring nine, 10 and 15 goals in their first three contests, the Terriers could only muster 11 goals combined over the two losses.

Sophomore midfielder Hannah Frey, whose eight goals and two assists the week earlier earned her AE Player of the Week honors, struggled to find the back of the net last week. Over the two games against ranked opponents, she scored only once and did not tally a single assist.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the BU offense came from senior attackers McKinley Curro (four goals, one assist) and Traci Landy (three goals), while the rest of the offense could only collect three tallies.

Luckily for BU’s offense, the team could not catch Harvard at a better time. The Crimson defense allowed a season-high 16 goals to No. 4/5 University of Pennsylvania last Saturday. In fact, that was the second time in three games that Harvard allowed at least 15 goals to an opponent, the first coming in a 15-10 loss on the road at Johns Hopkins University on March 3.

Embodying the Crimson’s defensive struggles has been senior goalkeeper Katherine Martino. The Crimson netminder has a high goals-against average of 11.07 and has saved only 39.1 percent of opponent’s shots on goal this season.

Some of the Terriers are already familiar with scoring on the Crimson defending corps. In last year’s matchup at Nickerson Field, BU found the back of the net an astounding 17 times en route to a 17-12 victory over last year’s Harvard squad. Curro led the way that day for the Terriers with five goals, tied for the team high with then-senior Sarah Dalton, to go along with three assists. Frey and Landy added two goals of their own, and then-junior attacker Erica Baumgartner joined in on the fun as well.

However, this year’s Crimson has already shown that it is not afraid of ranked opponents from the AE Conference. Harvard downed then-No. 19 University of New Hampshire in a 10-9 upset last Tuesday, led by freshman Jennifer VanderMeulen’s five goals. VanderMeulen was named Co-Offensive Player of the Week in the Ivy League on Monday for her efforts in that game, as well as her three goals against Penn later in the week.

Today’s game will be the first home game for VanderMeulen and the rest of the Crimson, although if last season was any indication, that still may not be much of a help for Harvard. Last year, they were only 2-5 at home and even had a better record on the road, going 4-5 when away from Cambridge.

Heading the effort to continue the Crimson’s home troubles will be senior goalkeeper Rachel Klein, who has played some of the best lacrosse of her illustrious career at BU so far this season. If the season ended today, her 8.22 goals-against average and .535 save percentage would both be career bests for the two-time AE All-Conference second teamer. The co-captain, in fact, already set a career best this season when she tallied a career-high 18 saves in the loss to Vanderbilt.

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