Marquette Women's Lacrosse Loses Heartbreaker To #17 Johns Hopkins In Double Overtime

Marquette bounced back from two goal deficits twice against #17 Johns Hopkins on Sunday afternoon, but when the golden goal rules kicked in during the second overtime, their luck ran out.  Alexis Maffucci beat goalie Sarah Priem for the game winner, and Marquette lost their season opener to JHU, 8-7.

As was the case a year ago in the season opener, Marquette struck first.  The difference here is that Claire Costanza's goal didn't come until nearly 12 minutes had run off the clock in the first half.  By that point in the previous meeting between MU and JHU, the Blue Jays had a 3-1 lead.  So we definitely had a different game going on, and that was evident by Marquette actually looking like the better team in the early goings.  Marquette was doing a much better job maintaining possession, and while they might have been particularly methodical in how they went about attacking, Johns Hopkins wasn't doing a very good job of holding on to it when they did have the ball.

The two teams would trade the lead through the rest of the half with each team scoring a pair of unanswered goals, but it went to the half tied at four after a goal from JHU's Emily Kenul.  Marquette did have a chance to take the lead into the break after JHU goalie KC Emerson was yellow carded for a shove on Hayley Baas.  The foul meant that Emerson's replacement, Caroline Federico, had to stay behind Baas and out of the cage on the free position shot, but Baas' shot went wide left of the cage.

JHU had the first two goals of the second half, but it took them nearly 21 minutes to get them.  That had them up 5-3 with nine minutes to play.  Taylor Smith's second goal of the game gave Marquette some life, and Emily Donovan's first goal of the year knotted the game back up at 5 with four minutes to play.  Goalie Sarah Priem came up huge in the closing moments of regulation with a monster save on a free position shot, and Marquette had one final chance to try to win.  The best opportunity came with just seconds left in regulation, but Julianna Shearer opted to make a pass on a free position attempt, and MU never got a shot off before the horn.

That meant six minutes of overtime, split into 2 three minute segments.  Things looked bad for the Golden Eagles when Kristen Cannon scored twice for Johns Hopkins just 90 seconds apart in the front end.  But apparently all the goals are in the net on that end of the field, as Nicole Gleason and Costanza scored to tie the game back up.  The Costanza goal is particularly baffling, as Federico left the net to do I don't know what.  With 20 seconds left in a one goal game, she moved about 15 feet to her right and way out of the cage.  In theory, she was covering a defender that was behind the goal over in that area, but for Costanza to make that pass from where she was, Costanza would have had to thrown the ball over the now gaping net.  Instead, she rifled it in before Federico could recover, and that meant a second overtime session played under sudden victory rules.

Although, there was one final twist.  With 18 seconds left after Costanza's goal, JHU won the ensuing face off.  There ended up being a scrum for the ball and Kenul was issued a yellow card.  That sent Marquette into a man-up advantage, but they had to go through the opening draw of the second overtime session.  Hopkins won the draw, and even down a player, Hopkins was able to draw a foul out of MU's Fran Meyer.  Dene DiMartino passed to Maffucci, Priem couldn't keep up with the change in position, and Hopkins escaped with the 8-7 win.

Costanza led the scoring for Marquette with two goals and an assist.  Maffucci was the high scorer for Johns Hopkins, matching Costanza's output for the team in black.  Priem made eight saves in the game, while Federico had three saves in just over 36 minutes to pick up the win.

Up Next: Marquette heads out to Colorado next weekend as they look to maintain their positive momentum after pushing a ranked team to the limit in the opener.  It's just the second season of Division 1 lacrosse for the Buffaloes, but they did go 11-8 in their opening campaign.  Colorado will open their season on Wednesday against Denver.