ODU FIELD HOCKEY FALLS TO UCONN AND WILL PLAY TEMPLE NEXT FRIDAY IN BIG EAST TOURNAMENT
By Harry Minium
NORFOLK, Va. – Field hockey can be a frustrating game. Sometimes you outshoot, outhustle and outplay an opponent and you still lose.
That was the case Friday afternoon at the L.R. Hill Sports Complex as the Old Dominion Field Hockey Team fell to UConn, 3-1.
"It’s a tough loss today. Congratulations to Connecticut – they have had a good season and are a good team. If you watched the game today, I’m very impressed with how our team played and controlled the shot and corner statistics tell a good story for us," said ODU Head Coach Andrew Griffiths.
The Monarchs outshot the Huskies, 17-6, and 11-1 in the second half and had 12 penalty corners to UConn’s five. But the Huskies scored three goals in the game’s first 25 minutes and made them stand up.
The victory gave UConn (15-3 overall, 6-1 Big East) the Big East Conference regular-season crown.
ODU (11-6, 5-2) finished tied for second with Temple (10-7, 5-2) and will meet the Owls in the Big East Tournament which begins next Friday at Providence.
UConn will meet Liberty, Villanova or Providence, all tied for fourth with 3-3 Big East records entering games Friday evening, in the other semifinal.
Andrew Griffiths, ODU’s head coach, shook his head as he looked at the stats sheet.
“This can be a funny game. Sometimes it’s like soccer,” he said. “You can dominate a game but the final touch wasn’t there. I don’t know how some of our deflections did not go in the net.
“But give UConn a lot of credit. They played really well.”
UConn’s Sophie Perschk scored first on a penalty corner late in the first quarter when she left-handed the rebound of a shot high into the right side of the net. There was no way ODU goalkeeper Suus Broers could stop the shot.
Juul Sauder and Madi Herb scored unassisted goals less than two minutes apart in the second quarter to make it 3-0.
ODU then quickly retaliated, with Amelie Zielcke scoring her third goal of the season, with assists from Rina Tsioles and Frederique Zandbergen just 12 seconds after the UConn goal.
But the Monarchs just could not find the net the rest of the way.
The failure to score on penalty corners was particularly frustrating for the Monarchs. ODU is among the nation’s top 10 teams when it comes to goals off penalty corners, but the Monarchs were 1-for-12 Friday.
The Monarchs hustled until game's end -- they had two penalty corners in the final 44 seconds.
“Obviously, we wanted to win here and wrap up the regular-season title,” Griffiths said. “And that was one of our goals, to win the regular season.
“But the bigger goal is next week, winning the Big East.”
ODU was ranked 22nd nationally entering Friday’s game and Griffths said the Monarchs’ resume isn’t good enough for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Winning the Big East Tournament would send the Monarchs to the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row.
ODU lost at Temple earlier this season, 1-0.
“I think we should take quite a bit of confidence from this game,” Griffiths. “We didn’t win but I felt like we outplayed UConn.
“Temple is a team I wanted to play again because we lost to them in overtime and we felt we didn’t play very well.
“And we lost to UConn. We would like another shot at them.”
ODU has several days of practice before they leave for New England.
“I’m sure we’re going to focus on penalty corners in the next week because they are so important,” Tsioles said.
"You have to finish those and today we didn’t.”