Florida completes lacrosse series sweep of East Carolina
The 10th-ranked Florida lacrosse team capped its series against East Carolina with an impressive 19-7 win Saturday at Donald R. Dizney Stadium.
"That was the challenge we gave to the team today — to come out strong and fast from the start — and we played really well coming out of the locker room," UF coach Amanda O'Leary said. "Really pleased offensively with what we saw, we had a lot of different goal scorers and a lot of different distributors, which is great to see. Defensively, we played extremely well. We cleaned up the things that needed to be cleaned up from Thursday and came out with a great team win today."
The Gators improve to 9-2 on the year and remain undefeated in conference play at 6-0, while East Carolina drops to 3-9 overall and 1-5 in the AAC.
Grace Haus led the Gators with a career-best six goals on 6-of-6 shooting, while Kassidy Bresnahan, Brianna Harris, Shannon Kavanagh and Danielle Pavinelli each notched two goals apiece.
The Gators had five other players who found the back of the cage once: Whitney Albert, Ashley Gonzalez, Charlotte Harmon, Jill Quigley and Shelton Sawers.
Harris led the way dishing out three assists, while Emerson Cabrera registered a career-high two assists against the Pirates.
Seven Gators each registered one helper in the game as well: Bresnahan, Kaitlyn Dabkowski, Gonzalez, Maggi Hall, Kavanagh, Kelly Schluederberg and Janine Suris.
The Gators picked up right where they left off Thursday in the draw circle, winning 14-of-26 draws in the game. Kavanagh led the way with four draws, while Harris added three in the victory. Paisley Eagan and Emily Heller rounded out the draw controls leaders - each recording two in the game.
Florida's defense limited the Pirates to just seven goals on the day, including hold ECU to only two goals in the first half. Cara Trombetta kept East Carolina's Megan Tryniski to just 1-of-3 shooting to anchor the defense.
The Gators recorded 13 caused turnovers, led by three from Trombetta and Dabkowski. Bresnahan and Becky Browndorf each tallied two CTs — career-bests for them both.
Trombetta, Dabkowski and Browndorf led the way for Florida with three groundballs apiece.
Sarah Reznick had another strong day in the cage for the Gators, coming up with five saves and allowing only three goals for a .625 save percentage. Julia Hammerschlag registered one save in her 14:30 in between the pipes.
The Gators have approached their conference bye week, with the team's next series coming on April 16/18 against Vanderbilt at Donald R. Dizney Stadium.