By Justin Paley
With three minutes remaining, the No. 12 Pride women’s lacrosse team held the ball and a one-goal lead against George Mason University.
The Pride never relinquished possession and with four seconds left, junior midfielder Becky Thorn scored, putting the nail in the coffin of a 12-10 defeat, clinching the regular season Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) title.
“Indescribable,” senior defender Bridget Eder said of her excitement. “We lost to them last year [in the CAA Tournament] so it’s complete redemption. It’s something our team was working for all year and we feel we have gained respect and we are the number one team to beat right now in the CAA.”
The Pride (13-2, 6-1 CAA) will host the CAA Championship on April 30 and May 1. It will be the first time the Pride has hosted a postseason tournament since capturing the 2001 America East title.
Sophomore midfielder Casey McGrath led the Pride with three goals while Eder made her presence felt with nine caused turnovers, four draw controls, three ground balls and her third goal of the season.
“I just tried to anticipate where the ball was,” Eder said. “My teammates did a great job directing me where to go and keeping my confidence up. They were a big reason why I got all those turnovers playing great defense.”
“She really stepped up today,” head coach Shelley Klaes-Bawcombe said of Eder. “We knew defense would help us win this game. We’ve been saying it all year that defense wins championships.”
The Patriots were more aggressive at the start, taking a 2-0 lead less than three minutes into the contest.
The Pride got on the board as senior Jen Maget bounced a shot into the net past Patriot goalie Meg Dentler with 24:50 left in the first half.
After the Patriots extended their lead to 3-1, the Pride answered with a 3-0 run on two goals by senior midfielder Tara Buecker and Eder’s third goal of the season to take their first lead of the game at 4-3 with 16:06 left until halftime.
With 5:35 left in the first half, senior midfielder Caitlin Connolly threaded a pass to Heather Albro in front of the cage, who scored to give the Pride a 6-5 advantage.
The Patriots tied the game up six seconds before halftime as Kristy Manas went around the right side of the cage and fired a shot into the net.
The Pride made a sufficient amount of adjustments at the half.
“We decided to get into our bunker style defense and play more man-to-man, just trying to guard our goal. In that way, we weren’t out high, leaning and lunging where a lot of our fouls were being called. We got back to basics and found our slide packages down low. Holding them to five shots in the second half helped us win this game,” Klaes-Bawcombe said.
The Pride came out of the locker room fired up as Thorn and McGrath both tallied goals less than two minutes into the second half, making the score 8-6.
The Patriots retaliated with a 4-0 run to open up a two-goal lead at 10-8 with 20:48 left in the contest, prompting Klaes-Bawcombe to call a timeout.
“I had them take deep breaths,” she said. “I talked about being able to see it, believe it, and then it will come. They were getting a little nervous and I tried to settle them down. I told them it was just another game and if we put everything out on the line, we could be proud of what we did-win or lose. I focused on relaxing and let them know we could win this game.”
The Pride offense ended the game on a 4-0 run while the defense shut down the Patriot offensive attack for the remainder of the game. Connolly, Thorn and McGrath scored during the run.
McGrath took a hard hit with about 20 minutes left in the game and injured her knee but was able to re-enter the game.
“Casey’s a real tough player. She has great stick control and she is able to take a hit. She has great shot selection and today I needed her to be on top of her game,” Klaes-Bawcombe said of McGrath. “It was a tough battle all game long and she really came up huge at the end of the game when we needed her too. I’m proud of her play and the more players step up besides Becky Thorn and Kim Hillier, the better team we can be.”
The Pride will host Boston College on Saturday at 1 p.m. in their final regular season contest. They will then take on fourth-seeded Delaware on April 30 in the CAA Tournament semifinal.
“I’m very proud of this team for getting the number one seed but I have made it clear to them that’s the easy part,” Klaes-Bawcombe said. “We have two weeks to prepare for a conference championship game. It’s going to be the toughest two weeks of their lives. I’m going to make sure they are ready to go.”