Wake up call: Field hockey outshot 67-11 at Champions Invitational, drops both games
EAST LANSING — The Central Michigan field hockey team found itself on the painful side of a blowout Sunday, wrapping up the Champions Invitational in East Lansing with a 9-0 thrashing against No. 13 Louisville.
“We ran into a very good team; a very experienced team, and a very speedy team,” said head coach Cristy Freese. “I knew they’d come out firing today, especially after their disheartening overtime loss yesterday to Duke.”
Louisville’s Nicole Youman opened the scoring two minutes into the match, finding the back of the net off the first penalty corner of the game.
Amber Thomas followed suit and Youman netted another goal, giving the Cardinals a 3-0 lead seven minutes into regulation. Rachel Hollenbach scored her second goal of the season before Youman added her third of five goals in the contest to take a five-point lead.
Junior Anastasia Netto relieved freshman goalkeeper Carissa Flocken after she gave up five goals on 12 shots. Netto made 12 saves on 16 shots.
Louisville added another tally with 3:33 remaining in the half off a penalty corner rebound that rolled right to Youman.
Offensively, CMU was almost nonexistent in the first half, recording zero goals on as many shots.
“At halftime I talked about going back out there 0-0 and to win the second half, obviously we didn’t win the second half,” Freese said.
The Cardinals piled on to their 6-0 halftime lead, adding three more goals in the second from Hollenbach, Youman, and Thomas.
Offensively, Freese was disappointed in the team’s stick-to-stick passing and their lack of chemistry. She said defensively as a team the girls weren’t moving well together and did a poor job of picking up man-to-man in the circle.
The Chippewas were outshot 38-3 Sunday,and 67- 11 total for the weekend. Louisville won the penalty corner battle as well, registering 15 to CMU’s 1.
After the game, Freese told her team not to forget this game or just put it past them.
“We’re going to put this score in our locker room because we want to use it to become a better team,” she said. “That being said, we’re a young team and we’ve got two weeks until our next game and our job is to get this group better.”
The Chippewas resume play on Sept. 11 against Providence at the CMU Field Hockey Complex.
Saturday
CMU lost their season opener Saturday against No. 7 Michigan State, 4-2, in game one of the Champions Invitational Tournament.
The team fell behind early, but knotted the score in the 18th minute when junior Brooke Sihota caught a rebound on her stick and sent it to the back of the net.
MSU added a goal by Angela Pagura just before the half and CMU freshman Simone Lazar evened the sore in the second with her first career collegiate goal.
The Spartans took the lead back 42 seconds later on a goal by Sabine van den Assem, and pulled away with the game on her second goal six minutes later.
MSU defeated Duke, who knocked off Louisville in a double overtime thriller, 1-0 on Sunday to win the tournament.
