Women's Lacrosse Looks For Second Conference Victory at Brown

After facing the No. 9 Stanford team last Friday and Ivy League rival Dartmouth on Wednesday, the Harvard women’s lacrosse team (4-4, 1-1 Ivy) is looking to pick up a conference win in Providence against a struggling Brown (5-4, 0-3) squad on Saturday.

Despite a five-goal loss last week to a strong Cardinal squad and a close game against a Dartmouth team that has yet to win a game, the Crimson is hoping to pounce on a Bears team that has struggled in the conference.

After getting a shot at the Ivy League tournament last year, the Crimson is looking to pick up conference wins early on and return to the postseason.

“Our conference schedule is a tough class and we’re learning a lot,” Harvard coach Lisa Miller said. “Some of the teams we play are a little bit bigger than we are and they just push us away so we need to stay over [the ball] and run through it a little bit harder.”

The Bears have struggled in Ivy League play thus far despite taking care of non-conference competition. Despite being a squad that has found it difficult to find the net throughout the season, the Brown defense is among the best in the Ivy League, holding opponents to only 8.67 goals on average.

The Bears however, are held back by their offense, which sits in the bottom of the Ivy League for goals, assists and shooting percentage. Despite the lack of offensive prowess, Brown has been a team that capitalizes off of penalties, shooting an Ivy League high in both free position shots, 11, and free position shot percentage, 27.5%.

Coming into the weekend, Harvard is looking to have big performances from its most consistent players including junior co-captain Audrey Todd, who netted four in Wednesday’s win, as well as sophomore midfielder Maeve McMahon and classmate attacker Marisa Romeo.

The three have combined for 74 points this season, led by Romeo’s 34 tallies. Romeo is ranked top 10 in the conference in both goals and shots.

“I think we just need to continue to run our offense,” said junior co-captain Tory Waldstein. “No team has really stopped our offense when we run it well. I think as long as our team is patient and really feels well with whatever they throw at us. “

On the defensive end, the junior co-captain and Crimson goalkeeper Kelly Weis has been quite solid over the season totaling 62 saves with a save percentage of 44.9; the defense as a whole, however, has struggled to hold opponents back, allowing an average of 10.43 goals a game—the second highest in the conference.

Beyond the defense, one of the biggest factors in the team’s success has been draw control. In a close match against Stanford on Friday, the Crimson offense capitalized on its possessions but struggled to score overall because the Cardinal held the ball for most of the game.

Harvard came out of that match with only 11 of 27 draws and followed it up with 5 of 19 against Dartmouth on Wednesday.

“Winning draw control has definitely been a challenge for us in the past few games,” Todd said. “We’re a very quick team, but person-to-person we just aren’t as built as many of the teams we play. So we just have to keep plugging away at in in practice and run through the ball and draw the foul.”

The Crimson has struggled to secure ground balls throughout the season as well, securing an Ivy League low 109 ground balls total. In Wednesday’s game however, the team secured 17 en route to a much-needed conference win.

Despite the lack of ground balls, the team has maintained the ball in possession— the team has the lowest number of turnovers  in the conference, 82, by a wide margin.

Though there’s a lot of pressure sitting on the offense to capitalize off of possessions, the attack has responded well.

Despite averaging only 76.5% shots on goal in the month of March, the Harvard offense is taking better shots overall, shooting 89.6 over their last four games.

“We’re just preparing for different looks,” Miller said “We try to run an offensive set based on principle and then we adjust to different types of defenses. We just need to work hard.”