Even if it was only 10 minutes into the first half, senior Lindsay Killian wasn’t going to let another game slip out of Oregon’s fingers.
Five days after the Ducks let North Carolina run away from them in the second half, Killian’s three first-half goals helped propel the No. 18 Ducks (7-2 overall, 1-1 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) to a 17-10 win over visiting Columbia (3-3 overall, 0-1 Ivy League) on Sunday afternoon at Papé Field.
“I just saw opportunities and I took it,” Killian said. “Luckily my shots were mostly on today.”
Killian’s second goal, coming with 20:46 left in the first half, tied the game at 2-2 after the Lions’ Brittany Shannon scored two early goals of her own to spark the upstart visitors. With just under 16 minutes left in the half, Killian completed her hat trick, scoring off a rebound from an Ilsa van den Berg miss to put Oregon up 4-2.
“Lindsay has recognized that the seam is open for her,” head coach Jen Larsen said.
The Ducks didn’t look back for the rest of the first half, outscoring Columbia 5-0 in the last 13 minutes to take a 9-2 halftime lead.
Killian wasn’t the only Duck to have a big first half, with fellow senior Jana Bradley adding two goals to pace Oregon’s offensive show in the first half. Bradley finished with three goals on the afternoon.
Focusing on creating one-on-one matchups with the Columbia defense, Oregon took turns letting its offensive starters attack the goal.
“We had Ilsa coming from the top … and then that opened up other people down low so Lindsay Killian was able to slip in a couple times, which allows Jana (Bradley) and (freshman Alex) Breiner to come from the top,” Larsen said. “The variation of how we were attacking the goal helped us.”
Van den Berg wasn’t able to pinpoint the Ducks’ slow start.
“Our defense was there in the first half but for some reason we were just slow,” said van den Berg, who scored a game-high four goals.
Early second-half scores by van den Berg, Bradley and sophomore Erin Chisnell widened Oregon’s lead to 10 goals with 20 minutes remaining in the game. Larsen began to insert her reserves freely, substituting goalies and a large part of her defense.
Columbia used that inexperience to its advantage, ripping off four unanswered goals in three minutes to halve Oregon’s lead to 13-7.
The late comeback left the whole team unhappy with its performance, with the majority of the comments in Oregon’s postgame meeting addressing its breakdowns and pushing for a higher level of play before its Saturday matchup against Johns Hopkins in San Diego, Calif.
“We came out with the ‘W’ but we didn’t feel good about it,” Killian said. “The level of play just kind of dropped. The effort was there but the 50-50 (loose) balls weren’t ours.”
Larsen was happy with the amount of time she was able to give her reserves, but wanted sharper execution on the field.
“We’re working on picking up the reserves,” Larsen said. “The second half was just not as pretty.”
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