Two days after reaching the 100-point plateau for her career, junior Sarah Allen picked up six more points off of six assists to close in on another milestone. Allen, who now has 41 assists on the year, is three assists shy of breaking the schools single season assists record. Her six assists today helped Quinnipiac defeat Monmouth University 13-8.
Quinnipiac (5-4, 4-0 NEC) came out with one of their best halves of the year and went up 3-0 in the first 8:28 of the game. After Monmouth (3-9, 2-2 NEC) made it a 4-2 game, the Bobcats ended the half with five straight goals, three coming off the stick of freshman Kyra Ochwat to take a 9-2 lead into the break.
Ochwat finished the game with six goals, five of which came in the first half.
“We were really happy how they came out,” Quinnipiac head coach Danie Caro said. “That was one of their goals to come out strong and play well right from the beginning. We came out a little slow on Friday so we knew we had to make that adjustment”
In Friday’s 12-10 victory over Mount St. Mary’s, Quinnipiac trailed The Mount 6-4 at half and were forced to mount a comeback in the second half.
Today the scenario was the opposite for the Bobcats who could focus on defense instead.
Following two straight Monmouth goals, Quinnipiac answered with three goals of their own to go up 12-4. Monmouth then responded with a three-goal streak to get within five but that’s as close as they would get as Lianne Toomey ended the run to extend the lead to 13-7 with 1:39 remaining in the game.
“(I was a) little disappointed in the second half that we had a little bit of a let down,” Caro said. “That’s something we need to continue to work on moving forward. We want to be able to play a 60-minute game, we didn’t quite get that today but we had such a strong 30 minutes that it didn’t hurt us today.”
Senior goalie Noelle Martello made nine saves in the game on 17 shots faced for the Bobcats. Katie Donohoe stopped 11 shots for the Hawks off of 24 fired at her.
Quinnipiac will now have three straight games on the road where they will try to build on their four-game win streak and undefeated conference record. They will travel to Saint Francis (Pa.) on Thursday before heading to Robert Morris on Saturday and then facing in state opponent Sacred Heart on Friday April 13th.
“Robert Morris and Saint Francis are two tough opponents. We know we’ve got a short week to prepare for them and need to be ready,” Caro said. “We’re pretty confident in our game plan if we can come out and execute it we should be fine. It’s just coming out and playing that 60-minute game.”
