A dominating first half effectively ended Oregon lacrosse’s game against UC Davis on Saturday, giving Oregon its first win of the season and a measure of confidence heading into one of its most important games of the year.
Sophomore midfielder Alex Breiner scored all three of her game-high three goals during the Ducks’ 8-0 stretch in the first half that helped secure Oregon’s 13-6 win.
A week after being on the receiving end of an offensive show by Stanford in their season-opening 12-point loss, the Ducks (1-1, 1-1 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) featured nine different scorers in the win, its fifth-straight win over the Aggies (0-1, 0-1 MPSF).
Oregon outshot the Aggies 20-7 in the first half, scoring half the time.
Breiner, who added an assist, tied Oregon freshman attacker Catherine Davidson with a game-high four points. Davidson, from Lake Oswego, Ore., scored two goals and had two assists.
“We came out and were really angry about last week,” Davidson said.
One of Oregon’s nine scorers was senior attacker Ilsa van den Berg, whose two goals and an assist put her back on the scoring column after having her 21-game scoring streak broken against the Cardinal.
“It was a good feeling to go into (North) Carolina with two goals under my belt, one being an eight meter (free position shot) and one being one-on-one with the goalie,” van den Berg said.
Her one-on-one goal was the first score of the second half with 29:36 left to play, putting Oregon up 11-2 at that point. Oregon would go up as many as 11 goals with more than 25 minutes left to play on a goal by junior midfielder Celeste Mayer before the Aggies scored the final four goals of the game.
Oregon head coach Jen Larsen said she could live with the second-half mistakes because it gives the team a better idea of what it needs to improve on before playing No. 9 North Carolina on Friday in Chapel Hill.
“At times I like to figure out what our weaknesses are so we can improve on them,” Larsen said.
After its reality-check loss against Stanford, van den Berg said improving on the “simple things” that led to the second-half mistakes will be crucial to winning against North Carolina.
“There’s no way we can go into Carolina playing like how we did today because we’re just going to get crushed,” she said.
Besides Oregon’s offense in the first half, the game’s most notable feature was its tight officiating, which led to 10 yellow cards and 70 fouls, the second straight game the Ducks have played in a game with as many fouls.
“We have a lot of people wrapped up in ice that weren’t before,” Larsen said.
One hit on Oregon junior midfielder Sarah MacDonald, described as a knee to her rib cage, required the team’s medical staff to request an ambulance to take her to Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend for a lacerated liver. She has since been released and is expected to be out 10 days, according to Larsen.
[email protected]
Oregon bounces back with 13-6 win
Daily Emerald
February 14, 2009
More to Discover