Despite a high ranking and lofty preseason expectations, the North Carolina women’s lacrosse team found itself in dire need of a win Sunday afternoon against Albany.
The No. 5 Tar Heels answered the call, snapping their two-game losing streak by defeating Albany 20-9 at Fetzer Field.
Although the Tar Heels (4-2) cruised to victory against the Great Danes (1-2), they found themselves facing a 2-0 deficit after a sluggish opening 12 minutes. Then senior midfielder Sammy Jo Tracy took over.
Tracy scored off an assist from Sydney Holman to cut the lead in half with 17:15 remaining. But she wasn’t done. She followed up the goal by immediately winning the face-off draw at midfield and fired a pass deep to a streaking Aly Messinger, who beat Albany goalkeeper Courtney Henderson to tie the game at 2 in just a 10-second span.
The Tar Heels never looked back after Messinger scored again 58 seconds later to give them a 3-2 lead. After each goal, the Tar Heels were usually right back on the attack as a result of controlling 22 of the 30 draws. Of the 22 draws North Carolina won, Tracy secured 13 of them.
After jumping out to a 7-4 lead, the Tar Heels scored the final three goals of the half and the first two goals of the second half to take a commanding 12-4 lead.
In North Carolina’s 8-7 loss to Maryland on Feb. 27, the Tar Heels had only one assist. On Sunday, the Tar Heels were screening, cutting and passing seamlessly, which resulted in them recording a season-high 10 assists.
Quotable
“Moving the ball is something that we’ve been working on and stressing all week. We’ve got a lot of really capable players and I think when you watch great lacrosse one of the things that sticks out is the (players) ball movement and their trust in each other. I think it builds trust to move the ball and also opens up plays, so to have 10 assists on the day of all different kinds, I think it shows the diversity that we can continue to build upon offensively.” — Coach Jenny Levy on the season-high 10 assists.
