By Stacy Troiano
Last week, rookie head coach Abby Morgan got a victory in her debut, Becky Thorn scored four goals in her return to the turf after missing a whole year due to injury, and the Pride looked good on offense and defense. There was plenty to be happy about after the season-opening win over Loyola Maryland. On Saturday, the 16th ranked Pride carried their momentum into Beantown to take on 17th ranked Boston University, but the outcome wasn’t the same.
Boston jumped out to lead 4-0 and later 8-1 and held off a late rally by the Pride to take the 14-10 win in the second game of the season for both teams.
Sarah Dalton scored twice in the first eight minutes of the game for the Terriers, leading them to a 4-0 lead right out of the gate. Senior midfielder Casey McGrath got Hofstra on the board to make it 4-1, but BU would fire in 4 straight goals to take the lead 8-1 with 12:56 left in the first half.
The Pride clawed to 8-3 after goals from red-shirt freshman Kendall Gray and junior attacker Kelly McGrath, but a goal by the Terriers’ McKinley Curro led BU to a 9-3 advantage going into halftime.
“We didn’t play our game,” Morgan said. “We talked about that in the locker room, we played to their game instead of playing our game, and we had to make adjustments.”
But it was more of the same early in the second half as Boston jumped out to lead 11-4 early on in the half, Hofstra’s largest deficit of the game. The big lead wouldn’t last long as the Pride mounted a rally, scoring four straight goals at the hands of Thorn and sophomore attacker Jen Bach, cutting the lead to 11-8 with just over 13 minutes remaining in the game.
“Being down 8-1, it’s tough to climb that hill,” Morgan said. “We could’ve easily rolled over, but we came up with a rally, and it was good to see that early on in the season.”
That would be the closest the Pride would get, though, as BU scored three straight goals to lead 14-8. Hofstra struck two more times as sophomore midfielder Lauren Whitcomb and senior attacker Kim Hillier tallied the final two goals of the game, ending the contest in a 14-10 loss for the Pride.
“It was frustrating because that wasn’t our team at all,” Thorn said. “We didn’t show our capabilities at all, but it was a good learning point. If we’re going to lose, we want it early in the season rather than later. The team realizes what we need to do now.”
Hillier’s goal came with just over a minute left in the game and extended her scoring streak to 37 games. Seven players scored for the Pride, led by three by Thorn and two by Bach. Whitcomb had a strong game with game-highs of six draw controls and two caused turnovers to go along with her fourth goal of the season.
Morgan was happy to see the fight in her team, and says the loss is just a good experience for a squad still learning its strengths.
“We’re still trying to figure things out,” she said. “We’ve got the three big guns and we’re trying to have everyone fit into a working system. It’s not going to be easy, but we took a lot away from this game.”
The loss evens Hofstra’s record at 1-1 after last week’s win against Loyola Maryland, and Morgan said she knows her team learned good lessons in its first loss and will use them to improve as the season moves on.”
“It was a good test for us and a good lesson learned early on in the season,” Morgan said. “We’d much rather have a loss in the beginning of the season than in the end. This is the time to learn lessons, and that’s what we’re walking away with.”
Hofstra opens its home contests this weekend, taking on the University of Denver on Friday and Cornell University on Sunday.
Hillier has scored in 37 straight games.