Jumbos fall to two top-ranked foes

The No. 12 women's lacrosse team suffered a setback in its playoff hunt this past weekend, falling to No. 7 Hamilton 9-7 on Saturday and then to No. 4 SUNY Cortland 14-8 on Sunday. The losses dropped the Jumbos' record to 3-3 in away games, 5-3 in the NESCAC and 9-4 overall. It also snapped a four-game winning streak. Despite the unsuccessful trip, the Jumbos are sitting in fifth place in the NESCAC, and with wins in their next two games they could still earn home-field advantage for the postseason.

“[The losses] might have set us back a little, but they definitely didn’t hurt us," senior midfielder quad-captain Lindsey Walker said. "At the end of the day, if we take care of business [in] the next two games, we’ll be on track to do what we want to do.”

Coach Courtney Farrell, a former assistant coach at SUNY Cortland, named Walker the team's fourth captain following the game.

“We definitely played really hard but we have a lot of things to work on after those two games," junior attacker and quad-captain Caroline Ross said. "There were a lot of good things that we did, but they didn’t go our way. We converted on attack pretty well. When we had possession we put the ball in the back of the net a lot of times, which is something we’ve been working on.”

SUNY Cortland earned its 12th win on the season in the process of handing Tufts its first out-of-conference defeat. Tufts fell into an early hole and, despite a shift in momentum toward the end of the first half, couldn't escape as it had against Conn. College the week before. Cortland's junior midfielder Nicole Bello scored the first of her three goals at 28:36 before junior midfielder Brigid Bowser answered back for Tufts.

The Jumbos struggled for the rest of the half. They were outshot 17-6 and lost nine of 12 draw controls.First-year goalkeeper Hannah Wiltshire made the only save of the half for either team as the Red Dragons took control. Cortland junior midfielder captain Tara Monaghan scored at 25:09 to start the Cortland run, in which junior midfielder Ashley Gentile followed Monaghan's goal by shredding the Jumbos for three straight goals. Tufts senior quad-captain attack Kali DiGate scored at 10:08, but by then the score was 5-2. Senior midfielder captain Emma Hayes-Hurley, Bello and Monaghan put up the next three goals for SUNY Cortland to bury Tufts 8-2.

“We have to come out stronger in our games," Ross said. "That’s one of our focuses, starting fast. So that is something we are going to be working on, and just having that mindset to be successful in the first couple of minutes and the whole first half, and then transitioning that into the second half for a whole 60 minutes.”

Walker agreed with Ross' sentiment.

"I think the Conn. College game did show us that if we are in that deficit that doesn’t mean we can’t come back ... but it’s definitely something that you don’t want to start off with early in a game,” she said.

First-year midfielder Jenn Duffy found the back of the net on a free position shot at 3:13, and DiGate scored again with a second left in the half. Ross assisted on DiGate's goal and the Jumbos went into the half down 8-4.

In the second half, the Jumbos played the Red Dragons to a veritable draw, scoring back and forth while keeping the deficit to four points or less for most of the half. However, a series of drawn-out Cortland scoring possessions beginning around the six minute mark prevented a potential Tufts comeback. The final score, 14-8, belied how evenly the teams played each other in the second half.

Tufts had no answer for Gentile, Bello or Hayes-Hurley; the three players scored a combined 10 of Cortland's 14. Ross and DiGate were the only Jumbos to notch more than one goal, but that was more a function of Tufts' mere 17 shots than anything else. Ross leads the team with 41 goals on the season. Cortland nearly doubled Tufts in shot volume with 32. The Jumbos' senior goalkeeper Rachel Gallimore turned aside four of the nine shots on goal in the second half, but her valiant efforts were too late.

“I think Rachel Gallimore [played well against] Cortland," Walker said. "She had four ground balls as a goalie, which is just, like, unheard of. She came in the second half and caused a lot of turnovers and ground balls and just helped us get the ball back on offense, which is what we needed.”

The previous day, Tufts fell to Hamilton in Clinton, N.Y. Once again, Bowser was the first on the board for the Jumbos at 27:18, followed by Continentals junior attack Margaret Gabriel three minutes later. The Jumbos allowed a mini-run -- going down 6-3 after Gabriel's second goal at 4:16 -- but scored three times in the last 1:45 to tie the game.

In the second half, Hamilton rattled off three straight goals, all unassisted. Tufts suffered a drought of scoring until 5:58 remained in the game, when Ross ripped a free position shot past sophomore goalkeeper Hannah Rubin. The Jumbos fell despite Wiltshire saving an impressive 11 shots. Once again, Tufts was outshot, lost the majority of draw controls and had more turnovers than its opponent -- all issues for a team stressing ball control. This was likely the toughest back-to-back on the Jumbos' calendar this season, however, as both games were away against tough opponents.

"Obviously it’s tough to have a couple losses right in a row, but we learned a lot of what we need to focus on for the next coming weeks leading into playoffs," Walker said. "We need to make sure that we get the draws and we need to make sure that we convert and execute and respect possession.”

The highly competitive nature of the NESCAC conference is evident in the Jumbos' statistics on the season. In their eight NESCAC games, the Jumbos have averaged 10.25 goals, whereas their season average climbs to 11.46 when the five non-conference games are included as part of the average. Similarly, goals against jumps from 9.08 overall to 10.12 against NESCAC opponents.

“Every game is a battle," Walker said of NESCAC play. "There is not one game that you can walk into expecting to win. We’ve seen that a lot ... there have been a lot of upsets, a lot of comebacks and things like that. It’s really exciting; every game you don’t know what is going to happen and you just have to play your hardest.”

This week, Tufts takes on Amherst on Saturday and then Bates on Wednesday. Both games will be played at home.

“I think this Saturday’s game is a huge game for us," Ross said. "We have never beaten Amherst since I’ve been here ... and we are just really looking to bounce back from this weekend. It’s a must-win for us to set us up for NESCACs and NCAAs.”