The No. 14 UVa women’s lacrosse team (9-7, 3-4 ACC) opens up the 2014 Atlantic Coast Conference Women’s Lacrosse Championship with a quarterfinal match-up against No. 7 Duke (9-6, 3-4 ACC) on Thursday, April 24 at 1 p.m. at Boston College’s Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Mass.
The winner of the Duke/Virginia game will advance to take on the winner of Thursday’s matchup between top-seeded Maryland (16-1, 6-1 ACC) and Virginia Tech (7-9, 0-7 ACC) in a semifinal game on Friday, April 25 at 1 p.m.The ACC Championship game will be contested on Sunday, April 27 at 1 p.m. All seven games of the tournament will be televised. The ACC’s Regional Sports Networks (RSN) will carry Virginia’s quarterfinal games, as well as both semifinals and the championship game. The games will also stream live online on ESPN3.
Virginia is looking for its sixth ACC Tournament title and first since earning a 10-9 overtime victory over Maryland in the 2008 championship game. The Cavaliers have advanced to the semifinals each of the last two seasons and have won at least one game in 13 of 17 ACC Tournaments.
The Cavaliers and Blue Devils ended the regular season in a three-way tie with Boston College for fourth place in the conference. Duke earned the No. 4 seed by virtue of tiebreakers with Virginia slotted as the fifth seed and the Eagles earning a six-seed.
This will be the second-straight year that the fifth-seeded Cavaliers will face the No. 4 seed Blue Devils in the opening round of the ACC Tournament. In last year’s ACC Tournament, Virginia downed Duke 10-7 in a must-win game, a victory that guaranteed UVa having the .500 record necessary to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. Virginia fell 16-11 earlier this season at Duke.
After suffering back-to-back losses to No. 5 Boston College, 13-11, and No. 7 Notre Dame, 12-10, the Blue Devils upset No. 3 North Carolina in overtime, 7-6, in last Wednesday’s (April 16) regular-season finale. Kerrin Maurer is second in the ACC in points per game (4.86), third in goals per game (3.17) and fifth in assists (1.71). Kelsey Duryea is second in the ACC, averaging 2.71 ground balls per game.
Duke paces the ACC with a .513 shooting percentage while Virginia makes 46.8 percent of its shots. Virginia is allowing 11.88 goals per game while Duke opponents score 9.87. Virginia averages 14.2 goals per game wile Duke scored 13.5
Virginia comes into the tournament having won five of its last six games including a pair of victories over top-10 teams.
In the last two weeks, junior Courtney Swan (Vero Beach, Fla.) added 19 points to her team-leading total with a four-goal, two-assist performance against Boston College followed by a two-goal, three-assist day at Maryland. She finished off the season with her second eight-point game of the year, scoring five goals with three assists at Virginia Tech. Swan ranks fifth in the ACC and 15th in the nation, averaging 4.31 points per game. Swan currently leads the team with 48 goals, ranking fourth the ACC and 18th in the nation, averaging 3.00 goals per game. Swan also leads the conference and is ranked 12th in the nation, averaging 5.13 draw controls per game.
Senior Liza Blue (Butler, Md.) posted her 10th hat trick of the season at Virginia Tech to extend her goal-scoring streak to 22 games. Blue is seventh in the ACC and 34th in the nation, averaging 2.75 goals per game, and is 14th in the ACC with a 3.25 points-per-game average.
Senior goalkeeper Liz Colgan has logged double-digit saves in each of the last four games, including stopping 10 shots in the victory at Virginia Tech. Colgan is ranked sixth in the nation and leads the ACC in saves per game, averaging 10.0 per contest. The player who ranks second in the conference, Duke’s Kelsey Duryea, averages more than two fewer saves per game at 7.20 with 52 fewer saves overall. Colgan has made 160 saves so far this season. Only Stetson’s Caili Guilday, with 179, and Colorado’s Paige Soenksen with 170, have made more saves this year. Colgan ranks second in the ACC and 26th in the nation with a 46.1 save percentage.
Share
Contributors
