On Saturday afternoon, first-year Massachusetts coach Angela McMahon will lead the Minutewomen into their home opener against Vermont.
The game will be McMahon’s first home game in Amherst since the 2008 season, when she served as an assistant coach under Alexis Venechanos, who took the head coaching job at Ohio State during the offseason.
“We love playing at home,” said McMahon “I think it’s a great environment, and being able to play in McGuirk Stadium is awesome, so we’re definitely excited to open up at home.”
On Wednesday, the Minutewomen traveled to Holy Cross and pulled off a 12-10 overtime victory in their first game of the season against the Crusaders.
The UMass attack was led by Haley Smith and Danielle Pelletier, who each recorded hat tricks. Jackie Lyons contributed two goals and an assist as Nina Sarcona, Lauren Terracciano, Tanner Guarino and Jesse O’Donnell all found the back of the net to round out the scoring.
Coach McMahon was pleased to see a large number of players step up and contribute offensively. McMahon knows that defending Atlantic 10 Player of the Year, Lyons, needs help from others if the Minutewomen are going to make a run at their third straight A-10 title.
“Something that we’ve been emphasizing is that everyone that goes on attack is a threat,” McMahon said. “If we can get people to step up and contribute like that, it definitely makes us a more balanced team and hopefully more challenging for teams to defend us.”
UMass was on the verge of defeat when senior Nazy Kerr came up with a turnover and set up Smith for the game-tying goal with 55 seconds remaining. In overtime, Lyons came up clutch scoring the game-winner with 2.7 seconds left in the first overtime.
Junior goalkeeper and captain Katie Florence stopped 15 shots in goal, nine of which came in the first half.
McMahon extracted both the good and the bad from their season opener.
“I think that we did a good job of controlling the draw controls,” she said. “That was a key thing for us, especially in the overtime, being able to maintain possession really put us in a good position to score.”
McMahon pointed out two major negatives that the Minutewomen could address in preparation for Saturday’s game.
“We need to clean it up a little bit in terms of turnovers, especially in our transition game, as well as limiting our opponent’s shots. We gave up a lot of shots.
UMass won despite turning the ball over 12 times and being outshot, 43-27.
“We’re just trying to focus on getting better and learning from our past game and making sure we make improvements on some of the things that were issues in yesterday’s game,” McMahon said.
The non-conference matchup this weekend will be Vermont’s first game of the season. UVM plays in the America East conference and were picked to finish fifth in the standings. Similar to UMass, the Catamounts feature a slew of underclassman with 11 freshmen and 8 sophomores.
Vermont’s struggles have been well documented. They went 4-11 last season and only managed one win in conference play. In 15 years in America East, the Catamounts are 18-67 in conference play.
This will be the first time the Minutewomen and the Catamounts have squared off since the 2007 season. UMass won the matchup 13-8.
UMass has dominated UVM in the past as the Minutewomen hold a 10-2 career record versus the Catamounts and have won the last eight meetings
The game will kick off at 1 p.m. on Saturday at McGuirk Stadium.
Jackson Alexander can be reached at [email protected].
