Marquette women’s lacrosse suffered its first home loss of the season to Ohio State 16-14 Saturday afternoon, snapping the Golden Eagles’ two-game winning streak.
“Overall, I thought we did a lot of great things today,” Marquette women’s lacrosse head coach Meredith Black said. “We just needed to step up our offense a little bit sooner.”
Despite opening up to a 2-0 lead to begin the first half, the Golden Eagles found themselves fighting to cut the Buckeyes’ momentum, as Ohio State responded with seven straight goals.
At halftime, MU trailed 12-7.
Ohio State continued its first-half success opening up to a 15-8 lead early in the second half.
Marquette’s surge came on a late 5-0 run in the second half to cut the Ohio State lead to 15-13. Despite bringing the score within two, the Golden Eagles were held scoreless in the last 5:50 of the half, giving the Buckeyes the 16-14 win.
“We made an adjustment out of halftime which obviously worked great, but we needed to figure those things out earlier,” Black said.
Junior attacker Caroline Stellar led the way for the Golden Eagles on the day with a career-high and game-best five goals. The reigning BIG EAST Attacker of the Week scored a hat trick in the first half.
“As a team collectively, we’ve had a win mentality, and I’ve tried to do that personally just by trying to get an assist or goal every time we go down offensively,” Stellar said.
For Ohio State, first-year Nicole Ferrara and senior Liza Hernandez led the way for the Buckeyes as they both recorded hat tricks throughout the afternoon, scoring four goals each.
The Golden Eagles outshot the Buckeyes 37-33 and had three more shots on goal than their opponents. MU’s defense also forced 11 turnovers compared to Ohio State’s five.
Marquette (5-4) will now head back on the road to visit Detroit Mercy Wednesday at noon.
“We have to learn a lot from this and reflect on it,” Black said. “We have to find tuning that will help propel us going forward.”
This article was written by Sam Arco. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @sam_i_am119.
