UNC women's lacrosse uses great goalie play to beat Penn

Entering the North Carolina women’s lacrosse game against Penn, goalkeeper Lauren Maksym had more goals allowed than saves.

She changed that in a hurry.

Maksym made eight saves and No. 3 UNC used a dominant first half to beat the No. 17 Quakers 11-5 on Saturday.

Taylor George scored four goals, and Brittney Coppa added a hat trick, and the two combined for six of UNC’s nine first-half goals.

“We played a really nice first half,” coach Jenny Levy said. “We got out of the gate quickly, which seems to be what we’ve been doing. The opportunities we had to score we put away, and we played good defense.”

Maksym came into the game with just two saves in North Carolina’s last three games — including none against Towson and Richmond. But after her eight-save, five-goals-allowed performance, she now has 20 saves and only 18 goals allowed on the season.

Six of Maksym’s saves came in the first half, when the Tar Heels (4-1) opened up a commanding 9-3 lead on Penn (0-2) and took control of the game.

“When it got a little chippy and we were throwing away the ball, we weathered the storm on defense and they didn’t get a lot of goals in,” Maksym said. “So it was really helpful to have a strong defense and make good saves.”

George and Coppa’s first-half firepower was all UNC needed to support Maksym’s strong performance.

Coming out strong is becoming a trend for North Carolina, which led its previous two games 10-1 and 7-4 at halftime. On Saturday, it was George’s and Coppa’s offense coupled with Maksym’s strong first-half goalkeeping that allowed UNC to take over the game early.

“We are a team that has, this season, come out really hard and really fast in the first half,” George said. “We’ve gotten out to big leads in the first half, and that’s huge.”

Maksym stopped Penn’s first three shots on goal while her teammates built a quick 4-0 lead in the first 10-and-a-half minutes of the game, with the first three Tar Heel goals coming from George and Coppa. When the teams went into the locker room, Maksym had stopped three more shots, George and Coppa had chipped in three more goals and UNC had extended its lead to six.

The Quakers did chip away at the lead, scoring the first two goals of the second half to cut their deficit to 9-5. But Maksym made two more saves down the stretch and North Carolina added a pair of goals in the final few minutes — including Coppa’s third of the day — to cap off the win.

“In the second half, it got really sloppy for both teams,” Levy said. “We just traded possessions with not a lot going on except for turnovers.

“We definitely lost some momentum in the second half, but we finally got some back and did a good job finishing off the game.”

Contact the desk editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.