No. 14 Bulldogs Bite W. Lacrosse

After promptly showing Yale the moxie that had earned them an unblemished road record, the jaws of the No. 14 Bulldogs bit the Crimson back, and, for roughly 28 minutes, refused let go.

The Harvard women’s lacrosse team (4-4, 0-2 Ivy) fell to Yale (6-3, 2-1 Ivy) Saturday afternoon in New Haven, Conn. by a margin of 8-6, thanks in large part to an almost half-hour long stretch which saw the Elis blank the Crimson offense and embark on the game’s fatal, decisive run. The defeat away from home was Harvard’s first road loss of the season.

“We knew we could play with this team coming in,” said sophomore attackman Emma Millon, who is also a Crimson editor. “We had just had a good win against Lehigh, we had a lot of confidence and had our game plan set.”

The Crimson planned to slow down the fast-paced Bulldog offense in order to stay with the nationally ranked squad, focusing on draw control and holding the ball for shot selection, Millon said.

Defensively, Harvard had specifically targeted Yale midfielder and leading scorer Miles Whitman, but the Crimson couldn’t keep the brakes on the Elis for long.

After two quick goals by junior midfielder Casey Owens gave the Crimson a 2-0 lead for the opening 10 minutes of the contest, the Bulldogs ran off a string of six straight goals, holding Harvard scoreless for the remainder of the first half. The frame was punctuated, ironically, by a heartbreaking unassisted drive by Whitman—her second goal of the game—to put Yale up 5-2 with just 51 ticks remaining on the clock.

“We had the defense working hard to get the ball out,” freshman goaltender Kathryn Tylander said. “We were holding strong, but unfortunately, we just couldn’t get the ball around the attack.”

When the Crimson finally answered back at 24:29 of the second half on junior attackman Catherine Sproul’s free position shot, Yale responded with two goals to put the game at a seemingly insurmountable 8-3.

“It was the little things [that killed us],” Millon said. “It wasn’t so much pressure on us, but a matter of us not capitalizing on shots and free positions, not making the cuts in transition. Ty was doing a great job, but she obviously couldn’t do it all.”

Sproul and sophomore midfielder Allison Kaveney engineered a late Harvard surge with just two minutes to go, as Kaveney notched two goals at 1:51 and :07 and Sproul contributed an unassisted score with 1:31 left in the contest to put it at 8-6.

“It was a pressure situation,” Tylander said. “And as players, you basically have no choice but to go to goal.”

For the Crimson, however, too little, too late.

“There was that sense that maybe we had them back on their heels because they thought the game was theirs,” Millon said. “It’s just too bad that we didn’t rally until the final two minutes—with more time, we could have done it.”

—Staff writer Pablo S. Torre can be reached at torre@fas.harvard.edu.