Oregon does a lot of traveling, so they make a big deal about coming back east and they also have a number of eastern teams come out and play them. They actually had Hopkins come out and play them in Hawaii and all the girls were like, 'We wanna go to Hawaii.' But they definitely still get a lot of good opponents out there, so it's very similar. |
She did a great job today. We're definitely very proud of what she was able to do in the goal cage. She had some good ground balls and saves, but I think you gotta bring it for each game and we'll see how it goes from there. |
She did a very good job. They're a very strong 1-on-1 team. They get ball at midfield and drive down hard. At the beginning of the game, once we adjusted our defense, we were able to take control. We had a lot of caused turnovers on [McCormick]. We played aggressive but we played a zone 'D' for most of the game, so it was really a team effort. |
She's a freshman, so I think it's confidence. Maybe the first [goal] was kind of like, 'Wait a second I can do this.' The second one reinforces it, and the third one sends it home. I think she's just a great player and I hope that that's the Sarah that we see the rest of the season. |
The great thing about that is that she did most of it in the first half and didn't play that much in the second half. So it really shows that we came out strong. Sometimes teams definitely have a tendency to kind of sit back and try and feed, but sometimes those feeds will open up if you keep applying pressure and we definitely did that today. |
They're steeped in tradition, and they've always kind of been lurking around the top 20 for the past few years. Traditionally they've been giant-killers. They always come out hard against good opponents. |
They've got some legs on them, they can run the ball. They've always had an athletic team, so this is kind of par for the course for them. |
We also had players like Lindsay Lewis who scored five goals and had five caused turnovers, and Danica Strutt. We had eight people with a point in the attacking end. That's really what we look for, and we had a great time of it today. |
We started to gain confidence from turnovers that the defense was coming up with, and it gave our offense a better outlet for attacking. When the defense is strong and playing like that you can take a lot more risks. |
We've really tried to play to our strengths a little bit more. Last year Mary really stuck behind the crease a lot and was a great feeder. I think now Mary has really worked hard to get in better shape and to get faster, and so I think she's a threat from up top as well. |