Feb. 25, 2018
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Playing its second game in a span of three days, No. 12 Penn State women's lacrosse capped off a 2-0 week with a 16-11 win against No. 17 Cornell Saturday. Despite some less than favorable weather conditions, the Nittany Lions were hardly phased, moving to 3-1 on the year.
With the first three weeks of the season now complete, head coach Missy Doherty sees progress, but like any coach, there's always room to grow.
"I think as a coach you're really never exactly where you want to be," Doherty said. "You're looking at progress and you're looking to see if the things you're implementing are coming around. We did a great job clearing the ball today. We had a lot of patience and did a great job as a team brining the ball down the field which is something we've been really working on, so that's great. We're just going to keep building and fine tuning and seeing where it takes us."
Facing a 4-0 deficit early in the first half, Doherty opted to sub in freshman Lucy Lowe in net for the Nittany Lions.
"I felt like we were a little down in momentum and Lucy [Lowe] and Madison [Cunningham] both do a really good job so we figured we'd put Lucy in to see if she could give us a spark and she certainly did," Doherty said.
Lowe proved just the spark the Nittany Lions needed as senior Katie O'Donnell quickly ignited the Penn State offense with her first of a career-high six goals to open a 4-0 scoring streak to tie the score. With fewer than two minutes remaining on the clock, the Big Red looked to halt that momentum with a goal, but Penn State was just getting started.
Quickly regrouping, junior Madison Carter won the draw control and raced down the field to bury her second goal of the afternoon. Penn State took its first lead of the day with 24 seconds on the clock as O'Donnell scored on the free position, adding one more 16 seconds later to send the Nittany Lions to the locker room leading 7-5 at halftime.
"I think that momentum swing was huge moving forward into the game," O'Donnell said. "It took us a little while to get started and then when we ended the first half like that, we could go into halftime with confidence like, 'okay, guys we're good, we got it.' I think it was a great momentum swing coming down and attacking hard, which we needed to do the whole beginning of the first half."
Penn State would not relinquish its lead for the rest of the game, but it didn't exactly come easy for the Nittany Lions. Cornell came within one goal of tying the score twice, but each time Penn State had an answer.
After back-to-back Big Red goals with 10:48 left in the game, Penn State called a timeout to regroup. It was veterans O'Donnell and Carter who came through out of the break, opening another 4-0 scoring run to lift the Nittany Lions to the win.
"It was just good to see them operate at full pace," Doherty said. "Madison Carter and Katie O'Donnell just had some great plays. Around them too, people are really coming along. There's a lot of players really gaining some valuable experience in these early games. It's good to see us getting better and better."
As new faces settle into their roles in the early part of the season, it's an encouraging step in the right direction for Penn State's upperclassmen.
"As a senior it's so awesome to see them come on the field with confidence like that," O'Donnell said. "I think it's only going to keep improving as the year goes on. It's only our fourth game so I'm so excited to see what they are going to have for the rest of the season."
Perhaps nobody proved more pivotal in gaining the valuable experience than Lowe, who earned her first collegiate win in goal, making eight saves for the Nittany Lions.
"Lucy was great. Some of the interceptions she had were momentous and gave us great momentum for the game," Doherty said. "She came up with some huge kick saves that I don't even know if everyone could appreciate if they were sitting far from the field. She really gave us a spark to kind of turn that game around."
Lowe would hardly take credit for her standout performance, giving it back to the improving Nittany Lion defense.
"I give a lot of credit to my defense, they were coming up with a lot of good interceptions and ground balls," Lowe said. "I give so much credit to them. The communication what huge and I think they also helped just bring the spark to the defense and keep the game going."