After defeating then-No. 11 Virginia with a season-high 24 goals on April 12, it seemed as though it would be a smooth-sailing victory for No. 2 Boston College lacrosse in the ACC Quarterfinals.
But that wasn’t exactly the story on Wednesday night. Instead, it took some time—perhaps more time than the Eagles would have liked—for BC (16–1, 8–1 Atlantic Coast) to come away with a 17–7 victory over the No. 7 Cavaliers (11–6, 5–4).
“I think one thing that we have been harping on is offensively, what our defense needs from us,” Mia Mascone said. “I think we just needed to take a second to pause and recognize that it was getting a little bit to be a track race, and just adjusting to get back to our game plan.”
With a win in the ACC Championship, the Eagles will accomplish something they never have: a three-peat. With Wednesday’s win, they are well on their way to having a chance at just that.
Just 1:12 into the matchup, Mascone started the scoring for the Eagles after Maureen Duffy’s turnover turned into a Mascone ground-ball pickup.
“I think Mia had a huge turnover to get the first goal,” Rachel Clark said. “I think it started with our momentum plays in the first quarter, and we were talking about in the media timeout how it was flat and we needed to keep executing.”
Unlike in its last matchup against the Eagles, UVA did not let BC completely take the reins. In fact, the Cavaliers counterattacked quite quickly, as a Devon Gogerty goal off a successful goalie clear knotted the score 1–1 less than three minutes later.
And then, something rather unexpected happened, given the result of BC and Virginia’s last matchup.
A goal from Addi Foster propelled the Cavaliers to a 2–1 lead, which they maintained for almost the remainder of the first frame.
Fighting for another goal, the Eagles couldn’t get anything in the back of the net, as they missed six consecutive shots and started the matchup 0 of 2 on free-position shots.
Clark put an end to that at the very end of the first frame, scoring to tie the game 2–2.
Then at the beginning of the second quarter, Kylee Colbert scored a quick man-up goal off a McKenna Davis assist, rattling a shot into the upper left-hand corner of UVA’s net to regain BC’s lead.
From then on, the Cavaliers attempted to play an unsuccessful game of catch-up, and the Eagles’ relentless offense only persisted.
Entering the half, BC had added eight goals to the scoreboard, while UVA had tallied only two, and the Eagles maintained a 10–4 edge over their ACC opponents.
This wasn’t a surprising statistic for BC. Coming into the matchup, BC had outscored its opponents 86–24 during the second frame this season.
“We have to look for really clear and easy shots, so that we are not sending our midfielders back,” BC head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein said. “When she plays like that—she had 15 saves—we have to do our part and play a little bit of a slowdown offense to maintain possession.”
BC only continued to separate itself from UVA during the third frame, marking a flashback to its previous matchup against the Cavaliers.
The Eagles’ four goals in the third quarter came from four different goal scorers in Colbert, Clark, Emma LoPinto, and Mascone. But Clark didn’t stop in the third quarter, as she went on to account for two of BC’s three goals in the final frame, pushing the score to 17–7.
“I was happy that we won ground balls, but I was unhappy that we had 11 turnovers,” Walker-Weinstein said. “I’d like to be under eight turnovers, and I think that’s going to be the requirement to win big.”
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