Following the final horn in Sunday’s ACC women’s lacrosse championship, Maryland goalkeeper Kasey Howard braced herself for the onslaught of her rushing teammates, as they rallied to celebrate their 12-8 victory against North Carolina.
Meanwhile, huddled at the sideline, UNC was forced to wait, as Maryland prepared to hoist the championship trophy for the fifth consecutive year. Senior midfielder Kara Cannizzaro distanced herself to the far end of the field, to reflect upon her team’s fourth straight loss to the Terrapins in the title game.
The senior co-captain could only muster a few words after the game.
“We weren’t getting into our offense,” she said.
For UNC coach Jenny Levy, the game simply came down to UNC’s atypical inability to clear the ball and a failure to control the clock of the game.
“We’re usually about 99, 95 percent on clearing,” Levy said. “So if we had taken care of that, it probably would have been a little bit of a different game.”
After heading into the locker room with a 5-3 halftime lead, the Terrapins scored six of the next seven goals to open the second half, extending their lead to 12-4 with just over 14 minutes remaining in the game.
But the Maryland lead was not insurmountable to junior attacker Abbey Friend, who added three unanswered goals in a nearly a three-minute span.
“I thought we were doing a little bit better job in the second half than in the first half just with moving the ball and creating openings. There definitely were more open slots in the second half that I could take advantage of,” she said. “But we really didn’t have a lot of opportunities to make offensive plays.”
UNC’s offensive struggles were due in large part to a stifling Maryland defense — something for which Maryland coach Cathy Reese commended her players.