UNC women's lacrosse earns 'ugly' win against Duke

The No. 2 North Carolina women’s lacrosse team beat rival Duke on Wednesday night, but it sure wasn’t pretty.

The Tar Heels (12-1, 4-1 ACC) beat No. 4 Duke (11-4, 2-3) 9-6 despite numerous UNC first half turnovers and not scoring until almost 25 minutes into the game.

“It was a really ugly game tonight,” UNC coach Jenny Levy said. “We had nine turnovers in the first half. We weren’t real happy with that, and that was certainly due to what Duke was doing to us.”

One thing the Blue Devils were doing to UNC was holding the ball for long possessions on offense by passing the ball around for multiple minutes before trying to get a shot on goal.

“Our defense is prepared emotionally to sit and work for that long amount of time,” Levy said. “But it does affect your offense.”

The Blue Devils’ possessions did not allow UNC’s offense to get settled, and the Tar Heels committed turnovers on many of their first possessions, missing and mishandling passes they usually control.

Junior Corey Donohoe said that it was different having so few possessions in the first half.

“It’s frustrating for us, because we couldn’t get into a flow,” Donohoe said. “But once we started getting the ball and just settling down and waiting for our opportunities to come it started coming to us.”

Senior Megan Bosica said she was not sure as to exactly why the Tar Heels came out so sloppy.

“The looks were there to score, and we just couldn’t finish them,” Bosica said. “It just made it extra hard on our defense, and then when we finally got back down it was like we couldn’t finish anything.”

After stopping another long Duke possession that started the half, UNC sophomore Laura Zimmerman beat the defense and scored to tie the game on UNC’s first second-half possession.

This sparked the UNC offense and the Tar Heels were noticeably sharper as they quickly took control of the game by scoring the first six goals of the second half.

 Levy said that settling down at halftime was key in the victory.

“I think we just had to get in the locker room and look at each other in the eyes and say, ‘OK, we all need to do a little bit better out here,’” Levy said

Donohoe said that she thinks the team won’t have the same issues in the rest of its games.

“We just have to focus on what we can control and not worry about what they’re doing against us,” Donohoe said. “If we just come out and play our game, I think we’ll be fine.



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