In the first of its final three home games of the season, the AU women’s lacrosse team (5-4, 2-1) used its offensive firepower to rout Patriot League opponent Bucknell University (2-9, 0-3) in a 20-11 victory at Jacobs Field. Eight Eagle players tallied a goal on 38 total shots.
“This is a great win for us setting us up for our next step towards the next Patriot League game, so it was a good win, good confidence builder,” Head Coach Lauren Campbell said. “We scored a lot of goals and that’s always a positive thing.”
AU kicked off the annual Lacrosse Blowout game on the right foot as sophomore midfielder Samantha Marshall scored the first goal in the first 30 seconds of the game off of a one-on-one opportunity. Bucknell’s senior midfielder Julia Braun would respond with a goal of her own, but as soon as the Bison tied the score, the Eagles scored six unanswered goals in 10 minutes.
“It was huge because all week in practice we have been working on seeing the back of the net, moving the ball quick, cutting through the eight,” Marshall said. “And I think that we executed that really well against Bucknell.”
By the time Bucknell called a timeout, AU had a 10 to two advantage in total shots. Midway through the first half, junior midfielder Paige Lin scored the first of her four goals after a slalom-juke move faked out the Bison defender and freed her up for the shot and goal.
Lin scored three goals in two minutes, and after the first 30 minutes, the Eagles went into halftime leading 13-7 with Lin and Marshall both carrying hat-tricks.
“Sam and I have a lot of chemistry. We kind of know and can set each other up,” Lin said. “We know where the lanes are and where we can help each other create those lanes and we take advantage a lot. We have good communication and good listening skills to finish well.”
The Eagles continued their offensive dominance in the second half as junior attacker Lauren Schoenberger scored back-to-back goals leading the Eagles on a 5-0 run after Bucknell had cut the lead to 15-7. Junior Bernadette Maher also scored her third goal, giving three Eagle players three goals or more. AU held their largest lead of the game, a 20-8 lead, before Bucknell scored three straight goals in the final four minutes to bring the score to 20-11.
AU outshot the Bison 38-18 and turned the ball over nine times compared to Bucknell’s 19 total turnovers. The Eagles also shared the ball well as AU had 11 assists compared to Bucknell’s one.
“That was one of our goals today, take a lot of shots, unfortunately we hit the pipe a couple too many times in the first half, but then we started finding the back of the net,” Campbell said. “We started finding our rhythm and more importantly finding each other.”
The 20-goal performance was the Eagles’ best offensive output of the season and the most goals scored in a game since 2007, when AU won 20-9 over Longwood.
AU will go on a four-game road trip before returning to Jacobs Field on Wednesday, April 13th to face Navy.
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