Strong ?rst half seals win for UNC women's lacrosse

The No. 3 North Carolina women’s lacrosse team’s leading scorer, senior Kara Cannizzaro, demanded attention from Boston College’s defense.

But when Cannizzaro drew double teams, junior midfielder Brittney Coppa capitalized, netting a career-high five goals in UNC’s 19-11 rout of the Eagles Saturday night.

And Cannizzaro still found a way to do damage, adding four goals to her season total.

“This year, (Coppa’s) had to do a lot more than she’s had to in the past, being a junior, and just having a lot of people graduate on our offense.” Cannizzaro said of Coppa, who scored eight goals in 19 games last season. “This game was a good breakout game for her, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see her have multiple-goal games in the future.”

Coppa and Cannizzaro combined for five goals in the game’s first 16 minutes to help UNC to a comfortable 7-0 lead.

“We just want to show everyone that if you cut off one person, that’s not all that we have,” Coppa said. “We have a lot of different weapons on offense. (Saturday) was my day. Everyone else has breakout games all the time. It doesn’t really matter who’s breaking out as long as we’re all in it together.”

Coach Jenny Levy also cited UNC’s defense as instrumental in the Tar Heel victory.

“We were able to take away their opportunities to get shots,” Levy said. “We had a couple of goalie saves, and then we just put a lot of pressure on them defensively, which helped us gain possession.”

UNC forced the Eagles into 11 first-half turnovers, while only giving up the ball twice during that same span.

By halftime, the Tar Heels led 12-3, and the game’s outcome was hardly in doubt during the second half.

UNC played its reserves for the game’s final 10 minutes, while the Eagles continued to play their starters, which resulted in a five-goal run to end the game for the Eagles.

“Giving up five goals in eight minutes — we haven’t done that all season, so we’re not really happy about that at all, but it helps those other guys understand that they need to keep working and get better,” Levy said. “I don’t think it was a great representation of what they’re capable of.”

UNC squandered a three-goal lead in its season-opening loss against then-No. 3 Florida — the team’s only loss this season in 10 games.

Cannizzaro said that maintaining intensity with a lead has been a focal point in practice.

“We’ve gotten out to few-goal leads on opponents in the past and have not been able to maintain that tempo, so we worked really hard on it in practice,” Cannizzaro said. It’s a new mentality that we’re working on to have everyone embrace it.”

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