Charlotte Veitner with possession against Pacific on Friday (Jon Sammis/The Daily Campus)
UConn rode a string of successful penalty corners and an offensive showcase from Charlotte Veitner to help run Pacific out of town on Friday evening.
VEITNER’S HAT TRICK LEADS THE WAY
Charlotte Veitner has provided much of UConn’s scoring punch the last several seasons but the senior forward entered the weekend with just one goal in the season’s first three games. The Huskies knew that Veitner was due for an offensive explosion.
Unfortunately for Pacific University, the Tigers were there to see it first hand.
Veitner found the back of the net four times during the Huskies’ 6-2 drubbing of Pacific on Friday.
Her hat trick didn’t come easy as the Tigers forced her to get creative with her scoring.
For the first time all season, the Huskies found themselves trailing when Pacific’s Gaby de Kock scored in the games 13th minute. UConn was able to draw a penalty corner 10 minutes later and Veitner soared a shot so high that no one stood a chance of reaching.
Veitner added a second goal off the penalty corner less than 10 minutes later when she found a way to tap the ball home while surrounded by bodies.
Coming out of halftime, Veitner tapped home a rebound from Amanda Collins to collect the hat trick and later added another goal in the 57th minute for good measure.
Head coach Nancy Stevens has high expectations for her entire roster but especially holds her seasoned veterans to lofty standards
“We just have a really strong senior class with the four starting seniors in particular are four of the top players in the country so we really expect to perform well in every game,” Stevens said. “We have the experience and talent.”
Veitner finished third in Division I in scoring last season with an average of 1.13 goals per game.
PENALTY CORNER EXECUTION
The Huskies tallied six penalty corner chances to Pacific and successfully converted on four of them. UConn put a lot of emphasis on getting the ball in deep offensively and it paid off for them on Friday.
“On our end, we were happy that we scored on penalty corners and that we gave up so few,” Stevens said. “We have highly skilled attackers and the only way stop them is fouling them.”
Friday’s game was the first time that UConn’s penalty corner offense seemed to be running on all cylinders
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“On our end, we were happy that we scored on penalty corners and that we gave up so few”
“This was the best corner execution that we’ve had but we work really hard on it,” Stevens said. “We’re starting to get that connectivity. It takes a lot of work.”
The Huskies return to action next weekend when they welcome Old Dominion and Boston University to Storrs.
Bryan Lambert is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email at bryan.lambert@uconn.edu.
