After taking a 3-2 lead against No. 14 Boston University, the women's lacrosse team discovered that the Terriers' bite was much worse than their bark. BU scored 13 straight goals to bury Brown, 16-4, on Wednesday evening at the Berylson Family Fields. The defeat dropped Bruno's record to 1-3.
Head Coach Keely McDonald '00 said it was a tough loss to swallow, "especially on (our) home turf."
"I think that they came out really strong and played their game," she added.
The Terriers struck first, 3:58 into the game, on the first of Lauren Morton's five goals, but the Bears answered with two goals less than a minute apart. Alexa Caldwell '11 scored her second goal of the season at 10:11 off a pass from Meghan Markowski '10, and Kara Kelly '10 converted on a free position shot for her fourth goal of the season to give Brown the lead.
The teams then traded goals. BU tied the game at 14:23, but Brown took a 3-2 lead at 16:01 when Ali Holland '08 scored her second goal of the season after a pass from Kiki Manners '10. The Bears hung with one of the top teams in the country for more than half of the period.
"It's great to start off a game like that," said Melissa King '08. "We're just going to try to play 60 minutes and keep the energy up, and keep the sense of urgency up all game."
But Brown wasn't able to do that against BU, and things went bad in a hurry. The Terriers rallied to tie the game just 35 seconds after Holland's goal, on Molly Collins' second goal of the game - and they were off to the races from there.
After Morton scored on a free position shot with 7:40 left to give BU a 5-3 lead, McDonald called a timeout, but the Bears were unable to stop the bleeding.
"Once they got on a run, we weren't able to get the momentum back in our favor," McDonald said.
In all, the Terriers closed out the half with eight straight goals, including four in the final 2:11, devastating Brown going into the half. Erica Baumgartner's goal with 11 seconds left increased BU's lead to 10-3.
Getting a break at halftime didn't change the Bears' fortune either. Morton scored her fifth goal just 1:01 into the second half, and the Terriers added four more goals in the next 12:44 to extend their lead to 15-3.
"You always want to try to control the pace of the game and the momentum, so whenever something like that happens, you just try to push back and refocus and regroup and move forward," King said.
The Bears were finally able to do that, righting the ship for the final 16 minutes of the game. Jadie DeTolla '08 ended the Terriers' scoring streak 16:05 into the half with her sixth goal of the season to cut the lead to 15-4.
Still, Collins tacked on her third goal of the game with just 1:21 remaining to produce the 16-4 final.
King made nine saves for Brown, while Rachel Klein tallied seven for BU. Eight yellow cards were handed out in the penalty-filled game. In total, BU tallied four of its 16 goals on free position shots, results of Bruno penalties.
The Bears will attempt to rebound on Saturday when they host Stony Brook at 1 p.m.
"We had some problems coming together, but we're going to learn from our mistakes and move on," King said. "Tomorrow at practice we'll regroup, refocus and start again to get ready for Saturday."
