Hunter O. Lyle—Sports Editor
After an underwhelming performance from the Owls, Southern’s women’s lacrosse team failed to snap their now three-game losing streak, losing to NE10 conference matchup Adelphi University 16-3.
Coming into this game, the team had a tall order to fill when facing the Panthers, who rank second in the NE10 and third nationally for Division II. Senior attacker Samantha Cozzolino said that the team knew it was going to be a difficult game to win, especially since the team is comprised of a lot of unexperienced or young
talent.
“Honestly, we all told each other from the beginning of this game, that this is for fun. We know what we [were] going into,” said Cozzolino. “I mean, our team is mostly underclassmen that are playing, I think there’s eight on the field. There’s only two seniors on the field.”
Compared to the Owls, who have six upperclassmen in total, Adelphi’s roster consisted of 13 upperclassmen, seven of them being in the starting lineup.
In the first half of the game, the Panthers got hot quickly, scoring two goals in the first two minutes. Southern was able to keep up for the first ten minutes of play, keeping the largest deficit to just three points, 5-2 with twelve minutes left on the clock.
However, the Panther’s unrelenting quick ball movement and tight, high-pressure defense gave them a 9-3 lead by halftime.
Coming out of the break it was more of the same, as Southern was shut out and eventually went down by ten, forcing the game into a running-clock scenario. The Owl’s sloppy offense, which gave up eleven turnovers in the second half alone – 18 in total for the game – matched with their sluggish defense and gave Adelphi a 16-3 win by the end of the game.
While the Panthers lead in shots, shots on goal, and ground balls, head coach Kevin Siedlecki was still optimistic about the team’s performance after the game.
“We really just played with heart, and that was the whole message today. Adelphi is number three in the country, they’ve got a legitimate chance at a National Championship this year,” said Siedlecki, “and we had a better showing there than we did against University of New Haven, than we did against Saint Anselm, than we did against LIU [Post]… we did much better in this game than we did in those games.”
With five games left in the regular season, Siedlecki said the team needs to focus on their offense first, if they plan on pulling off a late season push.
“We gotta finish our shots. We gotta see the net, we’ve been doing a lot more of that,” said Siedlecki. “We’re getting good looks against really good teams, and we’re just not getting it past the goalie, we’re not hitting the net.”
The silver lining of the game came from Cozzolino, who scored her 50th goal of the season on her first goal against the Panthers. While she is pleased with her own season stat, she said she is more focused on getting wins as a team than individual accolades.
“It feels good. I wish we had more but we’re working on it. We have some big games coming up, some more games that we can be competitive in,” said Cozzolino. “I’m really excited for those to see how we go about [those games.]”
Next up on the Owls season schedule is a road trip to take on nationally ranked No. 1 Le Moyne College on April 10.
Photo Credit: Will Aliou
