The Massachusetts women’s lacrosse team, as a whole, continued their strong play with a 16-7 win against Vermont Wednesday afternoon at McGuirk Stadium.
But one player in particular stood out because of her impressive performance – sophomore attack Hannah Murphy continued her scoring frenzy, notching four goals for the third game in a row.
Murphy pushed her season total to 27 goals, a huge improvement from the mere six tallies she notched last season.
“I’ve been taking all the technical things that I’ve learned since last year and applying them in every game,” Murphy said after the win yesterday. “Just shortening up on my dodges and following up on my shots. Mainly I have just been focusing on all the little things that I didn’t really do last year. It’s all kind of coming together.”
Murphy started off the season extremely strong, scoring 13 goals in the first four games of the year. However, in the next five games, she scored just two.
“At first I got off to a big start and I think teams were noticing that, so they began to collapse on me more,” Murphy said. “I wasn’t really finding openings and working to get myself open in those situations as much. Lately I’ve been trying to handle the pressure and work around that.”
“I think for a while she was really tense and uptight,” UMass head coach Angela McMahon said after Wednesday’s win. “She was putting a lot of pressure on herself and now she seems much more relaxed.”
After adjusting to the increased attention defenses began to pay to her, Murphy is back to scoring at a torrid pace. With four goals against George Mason, St. Bonaventure and then Vermont Wednesday, Murphy has re-established herself as the top offensive threat on a team that is full of them.
“She’s playing more loose,” McMahon said. “She’s just playing and going with the flow a little bit more now instead of forcing her opportunities.”
Murphy and McMahon each talked about the effect the scoring slump had, and noted how it made her a more patient player.
“Goals will come and I really trust my teammates,” Murphy said. “I think that it is great that we have such a balanced scoring attack. I think that has been one of our goals this season.”
McMahon elaborated on these thoughts.
“When other people are stepping up it makes Hannah’s job easier. Holly Turner has been playing great by putting many goals away as well as Katie Ott. Eileen McDonald is playing fantastic and getting a lot of good looks on cage. It is really just taking a lot of pressure off of Hannah knowing that she is not the only person that needs to score.”
Murphy saw exactly what her teammates are capable of doing offensively when she was not providing goals, and it allowed her to relax. She’s learned how to complement the offensive threats around her, and the result has been a torrent of balls finding the back of the net.
In addition to her scoring capability, McMahon also praised the Duxbury native for her all-around play.
“She is getting great looks on goal and doing a little bit of everything on the field for us,” McMahon continued. “Scoring four goals is fantastic, but she also won nine draw controls which gave our team a lot of the opportunities we had when others scored. I’m just really proud of her and glad that her extra work has been paying off.”
Jesse Korzen can be reached at [email protected].
