After Wednesday night’s 10-8 victory over Johns Hopkins, Terrapins women’s lacrosse coach Cathy Reese said she wanted to see her defense step up.
The unit allowed the Blue Jays to score six times in the first half. And midfielder Dene’ DiMartino tallied five goals on the day, the most the Terps had allowed to a single player this year.
In the No. 1 Terps’ 18-3 victory over Rutgers on Saturday night, the defense responded. The Scarlet Knights offense didn’t have many opportunities, and when Rutgers did, it struggled.
The Scarlet Knights’ three scores were the fewest the Terps’ eighth-ranked defense has allowed all year.
“I think overall tonight, we played better as a unit,” defender Alice Mercer said, “as opposed to individually very well.”
Attacker Megan Whittle scored four times, and midfielders Zoe Stukenberg and Caroline Steele each added hat tricks to pace the Terps to their 12th straight win to start the season.
Reese’s squad didn’t capture its first lead until the final 12 minutes against Johns Hopkins. That wasn’t the case in the Terps’ second Big Ten matchup of the season.
The Terps (12-0, 2-0 Big Ten) took an 11-2 advantage into the intermission. At that point, Whittle and Steele already had three goals each.
And just more than two minutes into the second half, Stukenberg fired a shot inside the left pipe to score her third goal of the night. Eight different Terps exploited Rutgers’ defense and scored.
“Against Hopkins, we were less than 30 percent shooting, so you can’t really get much worse than that,” midfielder Taylor Cummings said. “I thought this was one of our better offensive outputs today, and we had everyone involved.”
Although the Terps offense dominated most of the night, Rutgers (3-10, 0-2) held it in check early. It took the Terps more than seven minutes to find the back of the net for the first time.
In the opening minutes, Stukenberg started too quickly on a free position opportunity and Rutgers was given possession. Minutes later, Cummings couldn’t handle a pass from midfielder Bryn Boucher, which resulted in a turnover.
The Terps said they were too focused on themselves individually against the Blue Jays. And for the first seven minutes Saturday night, that might have been the case.
But then the offense took control of the game.
“Early on, I don’t think we shot as well as we would have liked to,” Reese said. “It took us a while to get on the score board. But overall, I think we did well on both ends of the field.”
Whittle’s free position shot with 22:48 remaining in the first gave the Terps their first lead of the night. Before attacker Amanda Turturro got Rutgers on the board for the first time with about 13 minutes remaining in the opening period, the Terps had scored nine unanswered.
Midfielder Kristina Dunphey was the only other Scarlet Knight to score. Her first goal made it a 10-2 contest. The second time she scored, the Scarlet Knights trailed 17-3. By that point, the game was out of reach.
“Coming off of the Hopkins game, there were a lot of things we wanted to work on,” Mercer said. “It was getting back to the fundamentals, playing good one-v-one defense.”
Reese said it was important the Terps were able to come from behind and overcome adversity against the Blue Jays. The Terps defense made sure that wasn’t necessary Saturday.
“We didn’t swing as much as we did against Hopkins,” Cummings said. “We gave them one opportunity. All around, a great defensive effort for us.”
