Massachusetts field hockey goalkeeper Sam Carlino gave everything she had, but it wasn’t enough to stop the Connecticut offense.
Carlino finished tied with a season-high nine saves, but the fast-paced Huskies offense outshot UMass 21-5 and had a 6-2 advantage in penalty corners in the Minutewomen’s 4-1 road loss on Wednesday.
Carlino said having to transition from the slow, defensive style of play the team faced against Syracuse and Ohio State over the weekend to the aggressive style of the Huskies was a learning experience.
“(UConn) played a completely different style from Syracuse and Ohio State,” she said. “We just need to be more ready. Our press wasn’t working very well in the first half, but we just need to come out and tackle the ball outside the circle and break up the play earlier.”
The Huskies (6-0) struck first almost 11 minutes into the game, as Anne Jeute took control of the ball in the center of the attack circle and slapped a shot into the bottom left corner of the cage to put UConn on the board.
The Huskies made it a 2-0 lead going into halftime when Roisin Upton converted on a penalty corner play in the 33rd minute, with Chrissy Davidson and Olivia Bolles providing the assists.
Brooke Sabia got the Minutewomen (6-2) their only goal in the 50th minute on a penalty corner play, with Mel Sutherland and Hannah Prince giving the assists.
UMass coach Carla Tagliente said the lack of offensive production was once again due to poor decision-making, and added that the loss of midfielder Izzie Delario, who has missed the last three games due to a knee injury, has also hurt the offense.
“She’s generated a lot of our attacks,” Tagliente said of Delario. “She’s very fast with the ball. She has created or caused quite a lot of our penalty corners, which is one of the strengths of our team. It has hurt in the past few days not having her, but she’s not coming back for a few more weeks, so we can’t hang our hat on that and we need to find a solution quickly.”
UConn took back the multi-goal lead in the 60th minute. The Huskies seized the opportunity of a player advantage after Charlotte Verelst was given a yellow card in the 56th minute and McKenzie Townsend took a feed from Sophie Bowden and shot it into the cage to put UConn up 3-1.
Bowden gave the Huskies their final score seven minutes later, with the assist coming from Marie Elena Bolles.
On Sunday, the Minutewomen will return to Garber Field to host Hofstra at 1 p.m. Tagliente said the team’s main focus will be on their own problems as opposed to worrying about their opponents.
“We need to do a little bit of soul searching today and tomorrow in terms of why we didn’t come out ready to play,” she said. “We’re our own greatest enemy right now and that’s proven to me over the past three games now, so we need to get out of our own way and start playing our best type of hockey.”
Jesse Mayfield-Sheehan can be reached at [email protected] and can be followed on Twitter @jgms88.
