Chalk this one up to a learning experience.
That might be the silver lining for the Army’s women’s lacrosse team which suffered an 18-7 loss at the hands of No. 2 Northwestern on Saturday in a non-conference game in Evanston, Ill.
The Wildcats, a bonafide women’s lacrosse blueblood with eight national championships over the last 20 years and one of the favorites to win the title this season, completely dominated the determined, but outgunned, Black Knights in virtually every facet of the game. The Wildcats outshot No. 17 Army 41-22, had a 28-14 advantage on shots on goal and won the draw control battle, 18-9. Army also committed 11 penalties.
As with all games against top competition, this game served as a barometer to determine how far the Army womens lacrosse program has improved over the 10 years it has been in existence. The Black Knights have made the NCAA tournament twice in the last three years and last year knocked off No. 4 ranked Stanford on the way to a 13-4 record and a spot in the tournament.
“I just think it makes us really look at our mistakes and how can we learn from them,” said Army coach Michelle Tumolo. “I just think we were forcing the ball when we didn’t need to. When you play a really good team number two team in the country you can’t make mistakes because they’re gonna put it in the back of the net on the other side.”
Tumolo added: “We just need to play collectively better as a team for the whole 60 minutes and really limit the green cards, the yellow cards and unforced errors.”
Northwestern raced out to a 5-0 lead early in the second quarter before Army scored three goals to close the gap to two. But the Wildcats scored seven of the next eight goals to lengthen their lead to 12-4 midway through the third quarter.
Brigid Duffy and Lily Valentine each scored twice for Army, while Allison Reilly had one goal and three assists. Lindsay Serafine had her hands full in the goalie net, stopping 10 of 18 shots.
Army travels to Atlanta on Saturday to take on Florida State (2-2) in a neutral site game before returning home to face Colorado, which defeated Northwestern earlier this season, on March 1.
