Lacrosse, Sports

Lacrosse squad defeated despite comeback hope

SARAH FISHER/DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF Senior midfielder Kristen Mogavero scored 4 goals to lead the Terriers’ offense in its comeback attempt vs. the WIldcats, but BU fell short 13-12.
SARAH FISHER/DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF
Senior midfielder Kristen Mogavero scored 4 goals to lead the Terriers’ offense in its comeback attempt vs. the WIldcats, but BU fell short 13-12.

Despite a spirited comeback that brought the Boston University women’s lacrosse team within one goal with eight seconds left, the Terriers ultimately could not seal the deal and fell to the University of New Hampshire by a score of 13-12 Wednesday afternoon in Durham, N.H.

The loss snapped the Terriers’ (5-7, 2-3 America East) two-game winning streak, their longest streak of the season.

“It was disappointing, but a little bit more frustrating from a coaching perspective,” said BU coach Liz Robertshaw. “We saw some great fight from the team in the last seven minutes … which I think should give a lot of confidence to the team over the things we work on at practice.

“But we dug ourselves a hole. Losing multiple chances on attack by not backing up the cage and not getting second-chance opportunities will hurt you against a team like UNH that has some strong attackers.”

The Wildcats (5-9, 2-3 AE) opened the game with a three-goal run over the first seven minutes of play, but the Terriers answered back with a three-goal run of their own with scores by junior midfielder Sydney Godett, senior attack Kristen Mogavero and junior attack Elizabeth Morse to tie the game at three with 18 minutes remaining in the first half.

Five minutes later, UNH freshman Nicole Grote scored to give the Wildcats a 4-3 lead, but senior attack Danielle Etrasco responded with a goal of her own to tie the game at four with 7:43 left in the half.

UNH went on another three-goal stretch over the final minutes of the half, but Mogavero scored the final goal of the first half to bring the deficit down to two as the teams entered halftime.

The Wildcats extended their lead to four in the opening minutes of the second half, scoring two goals to give UNH a 9-5 advantage with 25 minutes remaining in the half.

Etrasco scored another goal to cut the deficit down to three, but UNH scored just a few minutes later to regain its four-goal advantage.

After both teams notched goals to bring the score to 11-7 with seven minutes remaining, BU made a huge comeback, outscoring the Wildcats by a 5-2 margin over the final minutes of the contest. But it could not get that final goal to tie the game, and fell by a score of 13-12.

Despite the loss, Robertshaw praised her team’s play in the final minutes of the game.

“That was the kind of play that we would have wanted from the team the entire game, but we got it in the last seven minutes,” Robertshaw said. “To be honest, if we played like that for 60 minutes, or at least more than seven, I think that you would have seen a different outcome.”

Mogavero and Etrasco were the main catalysts for the Terrier offense during the game, as both combined for 10 points. Mogavero led BU with four goals.

“Kristen Mogavero was a great spark coming in on the field,” Robertshaw said. “She came in, she got the ball on her stick, and she put it away. That’s her job and she did it very well today.”

Junior goalkeeper Christina Sheridan had another solid game, recording five saves and holding the Wildcats from scoring on their two free-position attempts, but ultimately took the loss in the game.

After two straight games in which the Terriers scored at least 20 goals, the Terrier offense struggled for most of Wednesday’s contest, only mustering seven goals during the first 53 minutes of play.

“We lacked a lot of offensive firepower that we’ve been working on pretty hard for the past couple of games,” Robertshaw said. “We needed to take more chances on cage and we didn’t have it. “There was a lack of discipline on attack and people were very careless with the ball.

“There was a little bit of casualness to our attack and we were not executing plays, and those kinds of things really hurt you.”

While Robertshaw found some positives to take away from this game, such as the team’s defense, ultimately it was the Terriers’ inability to score that remained on her mind after the game.

“I was pleased with the defense,” Robertshaw said. “They held [UNH] to ten goals until we pulled Christina out of the cage … There were some things that I was happy about, but I think overall I’m just really disappointed that we’ve come off two games in which we scored 20 and 21 goals, and then we couldn’t get more than seven goals in 53 minutes of play.”

 

 

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