Women's Lacrosse: Scoring drought leads to defeat at hands of No. 6 Duke

Maybe this year’s switch from Class of 1952 Stadium to Princeton Stadium sapped the women’s lacrosse team of its typical confidence at home. For whatever reason, the Tigers have not had luck on their home turf so far this year.

On Saturday, No. 7 Princeton (1-2) fell to No. 6 Duke (5-1) in a one-sided 13-6 loss at Princeton Stadium. This was the first game of the season in which the Tigers weren’t neck-and-neck with their opponent. On Feb. 27, despite a less-than-perfect game, the Tigers eked out a 10-9 overtime win against Johns Hopkins, while Princeton lost by a hair to Rutgers in a 12-11 upset last Wednesday.

At several points in the first half, Princeton’s prospects looked bright. With 20 minutes left to play, senior attack and tri-captain Kristin Morrison knotted the score at 2-2, and five minutes later, Duke had only widened its lead to a manageable two goals with a score of 5-3. After that point, however, Duke took off, amassing a 9-4 lead by the end of the half.

Head coach Chris Sailer explained that the Tigers were simply outplayed.

“I think Duke played a great game,” Sailer said. “Duke came at us really hard, and we did not respond to the pace of the game. We were our own worst enemy out there, with not being able to handle the ball as well as we needed to in transition. And offensively, we never really got anything going.”

After two goals by Morrison — one unassisted and one with junior attack and tri-captain Lizzy Drumm on the assist — brought the score up from 2-0 to 2-2, the Blue Devils scored twice more. One of the goals came from by midfielder Sarah Bullard, who was also member of the U.S. national women’s lacrosse team that won the 2009 World Cup championship. The goal was to be the first of many by Bullard, who totaled five of the Devils’ 13 goals.

With 17:21 remaining in the first half, freshman midfielder Charlotte Davis scored off a pass from Drumm to shrink Duke’s lead to 4-3. Drumm’s team-leading two assists comprised half of Princeton’s total for the game.

The Princeton defense let two more goals slip in, increasing the team’s deficit to 6-3. With 13:28 left, back on the offensive end, Drumm received the ball from sophomore midfielder Barb Previ and lofted it into the net. It would be the last Tiger goal for more than 38 minutes — a drought that extended across the first and second halves combined and ended with Duke holding a commanding 13-4 lead.

“We had some problems getting the ball out from our defensive end,” junior goalie Erin Tochihara said. “We didn’t really see the open field, we had a lot of failed transitions to the attack ... A number of things just added up.”

Sailer agreed that the attack never quite settled into a comfortable rhythm.

“We kept going for fast shots and one-on-one stuff; we didn’t really get into the flow. We never really challenged their defense, so we were on D virtually the whole game. It’s hard to win a game like that against such a potent offense like Duke’s,” Sailer said.

Princeton was also hindered by two yellow cards in the second half, but the attack rallied in the last six minutes of the game and even managed to score during one of the three-minute periods when the team was a man down. With 5:27 left to play, Morrison was awarded a free-position shot, and scored to bring the Tigers out of their long goal-free slump. Exactly two minutes later, when the penalty was no longer in effect, freshman midfielder Jackie Klauberg flipped the ball behind her back into the net to score the final goal of the game off a pass from junior midfielder Maisie Devine.

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For the Tigers, this game will be a learning experience, Tochihara explained.

“I think this was a game we can learn from, and one that’s going to force us to grow up quickly,” Tochihara said. “This game showed us a high level of lacrosse, and we know that our practices are going to have to be more intense.”

On that sunny Saturday afternoon, however, there were glimpses of what Princeton soon could be.

“There were moments in the game that were good,” Tochihara said. “The offense looks great, there was a lot of good movement, there were a lot of moments that showed our potential.”

Next Saturday, the Tigers will look to end their losing streak when they travel to Providence, R.I., for the team’s first Ivy League game against Brown at 1 p.m.