Winning is never easy in the NCAA Women’s Lacrosse Tournament—even in the early rounds. It’s a field of the best teams in the nation, after all.
When your team has a star that leads the nation in goals, a player that has racked up the third most assists in the nation, and a goalkeeper with the best save percentage in NCAA, winning gets a little bit easier.
Maybe not as easy as could be expected, though.
Even with all those pieces, and even after starting the game on a 6–0 run, No. 2 Boston College lacrosse (18–2, 8–1 Atlantic Coast) found itself in a late-game battle with Stony Brook (16–5, 8–0 Colonial) on Sunday afternoon in the second round of the 2025 NCAA Tournament.
“Stony Brook’s really good,” BC head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein said. “They’re a really good team. But I think our girls hung around in the end and found a way to win, which I think is really important because of our history, of the season that we’ve had—haven’t had too many opportunities to do that.”
The score was 8–6 BC as a goal early in the fourth quarter left the Eagles with a mere shred of the 7–2 lead they had coming out of halftime.
But BC went into the game 29–1 in games following a loss, dating all the way back to the 2017 season. Bouncing back is tradition for the Eagles. And at BC, traditions are hard to break.
Thanks to a tough fourth-quarter effort, BC ultimately followed up its loss to North Carolina in the ACC Championship two weeks ago with a 10–7 win over Stony Brook, grasping the Eagles’ 15th straight win in home NCAA Tournament games and sending them to the tournament quarterfinals.
“We’re a little bit of a different team than we were from two weeks ago, which I told the girls before the game,” Walker-Weinstein said. “That’s really good, and we’re just going to keep continuing to evolve, I think is the most important thing at this time of year.”
Emma LoPinto took on a scorer role immediately to start the game, netting the first two goals of the matchup for the Eagles.
The first came when sophomore-goalkeeper Natalia Altebrando came far out of the net and LoPinto took advantage, stripping Altebrando of the ball, scooping it up, and delivering an uncontested shot into the back of Stony Brook’s net.
“We talked a lot this week about having our sticks up, and riding hard, you know, for the defense,” LoPinto said. “I just got a stick on it and was able to [secure] the ground ball and send it in the net.”
LoPinto completed her hat trick less than halfway through the second quarter, when Morgan Smith’s ground ball pickup at midfield led to LoPinto getting her defender on her back, receiving a pass from Smith, and shooting it home from just outside the crease.
Naturally, it was the Eagles’—and the NCAA’s— leading scorer Rachel Clark that struck next to put BC up 3–0.
Then, Kylee Colbert, sister of Stony Brook senior Casey Colbert, got some family revenge as she raised her stick and slammed the ball into the Seawolves’ net.
Colbert assisted Stony Brook’s first goal of the game as Charlotte Wilmoth, who leads her team with 90 points this season, sliced it past Dolce to finally get the Seawolves on the board with about five minutes left in the second frame.
The Seawolves netted another goal shortly after, and the momentum briefly seemed to have shifted in their favor. They were moving quicker, cutting more, and the Eagles looked more scrambled than they had for the first 25 minutes of the game.
That brief lag for BC ended even before the half did, however, as freshman Devon Russell scored a grounder that came out of a free-position attempt with one second remaining in the half following a foul on Stony Brook. BC stole the momentum back, refocused as it headed into the locker room up 7–2.
Stony Brook struck first in the second half, once again cutting the lead to four about 2:30 into the third. A slick LoPinto assist turned-Clark goal offset that mishap, though, and Tewaaraton Award finalist Shea Dolce made saves 30 seconds apart about halfway to keep BC’s lead at five.
“Offense, defense, draw, found different moments of digging deep and finding a way to make a play,” Walker-Weinstein said. “And that’s what we focused on, what we’ve been talking about. So that’s what I’m most happy about. And thank God for Shea [Dolce].”
Stony Brook wouldn’t go away, though, and another goal from Wilmoth cut the difference to four with about 2:30 left in the third quarter.
Courtney Maclay exacerbated the Eagles’ blooming problems. The senior attacker scored six goals in Friday’s game against Loyola Maryland, helping the Seawolves to advance. And she certainly continued to pose a problem in Sunday’s matchup.
Until the end of the third quarter, BC had managed to silence her. But Maclay finally broke through, beating her defender one-on-one and shooting the ball past Dolce to make it an 8–5 game headed into the final frame.
Clark scored a goal at a crucial time, stretching BC’s lead to 9–6 with 4:27 left in the third quarter. With two minutes left in the game, though, Maclay worked some magic once again. She fired it from the left side to make it a 9–7 game with two minutes to play.
That’s as close as the Seawolves ever got, however.
Clark scored an empty-netter with less than a minute to play—her fourth score of the game—and a sea of neon yellow-dressed fans in Alumni stood up to celebrate as the Eagles advanced despite a second-half breakdown that could have ended in disaster in Chestnut Hill.
“We talked about this week the exchange of energy,” LoPinto said. “And I think, you know, it’s one thing to have it with our teammates and our coaches, but it’s another to have it from our fan base.”
The win sends the Eagles to the quarterfinal game as they continue their hunt for a back-to-back championship title.
“Last year’s team was last year’s team, and this year’s team is this year’s team,” LoPinto said. “We’re just such an awesome team, and we’re ready for the playoffs. We spent a lot of time this past week prepping and taking it one game at a time, one day at a time. It’s a privilege to make the tournament and to get one more day with each other.”
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