The women’s lacrosse team took down Marquette 17-14 in a game earlier in the week before the Cincinnati match. (Charlotte Lao/The Daily Campus)
The UConn women’s lacrosse team won their third game in a row on Saturday, defeating the Cincinnati Bearcats 18-11.
Before the game, UConn head coach Katie Woods described how the team could improve to defeat Cincinnati.
“We just want to continue to get better and better,” Woods said. “It’s a completely different team, a completely different way of playing and style and we’ve got to prepare for it. We want to be cleaner in a little bit of our transition. We want to be able to stop the momentum and really come up with some big defensive stops.”
The plan worked as UConn caused 30 Cincinnati turnovers.
UConn (6-8, 3-4 Big East) was led by Grace Nolan who tied the school record for points in a game with 10. Nolan had five goals and five assists. The school record for points in a game was set by Shannon Burke in 2007. This was Nolan’s first career double-digit point game.
The game was Cincinnati’s fourth loss in a row. They are 5-10 and 1-6 in the Big East.
The Huskies came out strong in the first half with an eight goal run to start the game. At the break UConn led 11-4.
UConn started the second half just like the first half with a five goal run in the first ten minutes. Cincinnati did try to overcome the deficit, scoring six of the final eight goals. The Huskies had a season high 18 goals against the Bearcats.
Besides Nolan’s spectacular performance, other Huskies also shined. Sophomore attacker Cait Leary had a career high three goals. Senior attacker Jacqueline Jordan added four goals. Jordan now has 34 goals this season.
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“We just want to continue to get better and better.”
“When we played to our strengths and stuck to the game plan today, we did very well,” Woods said. “We found a lot of success in our transition game which was nice to see.”
Freshman goalkeeper Grace Beshlian had nine saves in the game. Beshlian has played all 14 games, with 144 saves for the season.
For the Bearcats, sophomore midfielders Amanda Donovan and Katie Stegmann both had a hat trick and an assist. Stegmann’s four points were a career high. Freshman attacker Monica Borzillo had two goals and three assists to notch her 70th point of the season. Borzillo owns the single-season records for points per game (4.67), assists (34) and assists per game (2.27).
Cincinnati’s Schuyler Nissen collected five ground balls to tie a career best.
The Huskies head to Villanova next for a game on April 22.
Mariana Dominguez is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at mariana.dominguez@uconn.edu.
