The Massachusetts women’s lacrosse team scored the first seven goals of the contest against La Salle, all in the first quarter, on their way to a 19-5 blowout victory on Wednesday. The dominant performance came on the heels of a 19-4 result against George Washington on March 18.

The Minutewomen (9-1, 3-0 Atlantic 10) bossed almost every stat by a significant margin as they did last time, outshooting the Explorers 37-10 and winning the turnover battle 13-25.

UMass also held La Salle (0-9, 0-3 A-10) to 9-of-19 on clear attempts, which Minutewomen coach Jana Drummond said she was most impressed with. La Salle had trouble getting the ball out of their own defensive area for most of the afternoon as UMass focused on causing chaos in the rides.

“We were kind of baiting some of those passes for [Hannah] Heller to get those interceptions up top for them, to have that kind of physicality to cause turnovers,” Drummond said. “​​It was a great look for us on defense when we were executing what we needed to do, and working together by being a step ahead [and] reading what the offense was trying to do.”

Drummond also pointed out her team’s supremacy on draw controls, which it won 22-6, as one of the biggest catalysts for the win. Time and again, Heller and Jordan Dean used their pronounced advantages on height and physicality to snatch the ball out of the air on draw controls against the smaller face-off specialists for La Salle. Dean and Heller combined for 16 draw controls of the 19 in which a foul was not called on the loose ball.

“We’ve been really focusing on that,” Drummond said. “I felt our draw team did a great job of collecting it.”

Alex Finn showed out for the Minutewomen in attack, recording five assists along with two goals. Finn displayed poise and accuracy in her passes, finding players for high-chance shots both in settled attacking situations and on the break.

“I think today was a big off-ball game,” Finn said. “Everyone was trying to read their defenders and watch when they were turning their heads, and that’s when they’re slipping into the inside. And the people off-ball are telling us where to move the ball so we can see it before we even have the ball on our sticks.”

Charlotte Wilmoth led the goalscoring charge for the Minutewomen, putting five into the back of the net. Wilmoth made great use of crisp UMass passing to gather possession in dangerous areas and score with her athleticism. She scored the opening goal while falling backwards from contact by a La Salle defender, and scored the second on a powerful jump shot after plucking a lofted pass by Kylee Bowen out of the air in front of goal.

“[Wilmoth] did really well slip cutting in the middle,” Finn said. “We throw a lot of passes [to] her and we know she’s going to catch it even if it’s a bad feed, and she’s going to finish it.”

Despite the combined 38-9 score line of the past two games, Drummond asserted that there were still things for her team to improve upon, one of which was getting new players familiar with roles in the rides.

“If we can help them understand what they need to be in, we can hold [our opponents],” Drummond said. “Hold them so they’re not scoring three goals in the second quarter back-to-back like that.”

“There’s always those holes that we can continue to improve on.”

UMass will try to keep up its momentum in a road clash against St. Bonaventure on Saturday, March 25 at 1 p.m.

Jedhi Lee can be reached at [email protected].