After the hugs, flowers and balloons from the pre-game senior ceremony were over, the No. 19 Oregon lacrosse team didn’t pull any punches against visiting Saint Mary’s Sunday afternoon at Papé Field, taking the game over from the beginning en route to a 20-3 win on Senior Day.
The victory, which extended Oregon’s 6-0 all-time record against Saint Mary’s (2-12 overall, 0-3 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation), came a day after the Ducks (10-5, 2-3) lost to conference-leading California.
“It was what we needed,” senior midfielder Jen May said. “We needed to have some fun out there and really take it to someone before we head out on the road.”
Seniors Lindsay Killian, May and Jana Bradley each scored three goals to lead all scorers in their final contest in Eugene.
The Ducks’ final regular season games are April 18 and 20 at Vermont and New Hampshire.
Oregon’s 10th win of the year was a wire-to-wire affair, leading the Gaels 6-0 after 10 minutes and 9-3 at the half. The Ducks’ defense, a question mark for the past two weeks, held the visitors scoreless for the final 32 minutes of the game.
Seven of the nine Oregon first half goals were scored by, appropriately, seniors. Attacker Bradley scored the first two goals before Killian scored the game’s third and fourth.
Seniors May, Jenny Browne, Theresa Waldron and redshirt junior Erin Gaebe, a member of the first recruiting class, all added first half scores. Saint Mary’s defender Lisa Vogeley scored the final goal of the game for the visitors with 2:20 left in the first half.
“It was our day,” May said. “We were just pumped to play one last time altogether and it’s crazy thinking it’s been four years.”
May and Bradley led the scoring charge in the second half only 20 seconds in before juniors Casey Rector and Ilsa van den Berg added two more to push the lead to 10, a significant number in lacrosse because any 10-goal lead automatically starts a running clock, stopping only for timeouts.
After shooting 28 percent against the Golden Bears on Saturday, Oregon’s more “focused” attack, said head coach Jen Larsen, scored on 20 of its 32 shots on goal, a clip of 63 percent.
“We needed to score a lot of goals, we needed to prove to ourselves this is what we’re capable of doing,” Bradley said.
California 12, No. 19 Oregon 8
For how well the Ducks’ offense played Sunday, their attack wasn’t able to hold a lead over the Golden Bears (8-5, 4-0) past the first goal of the game 2:20 into the first half Saturday.
Cal used a 4-0 run in the final 10 minutes of the first half to break away from a 3-3 deadlock and was able to withstand a brief Oregon run at the beginning of the second half, despite playing “man down” due to leading scorer Alyse Kennedy’s ejection for two yellow cards.
“It was a breakdown all around,” Larsen said. “Once we got inside the shooters did a poor job of finding open space around the goalkeeper.”
Waldron’s four points from two goals and two assists tied for the game-high in the losing effort, which likely dropped the Ducks out of any contention for the NCAA Tournament.
“I think that was our downfall today. We just got outworked and we just didn’t play as a team today,” Waldron said.
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