Before Wednesdays game, No. 18 Tufts was 2-2 in the NESCAC and desperately needed a win to remain in the running for the conference title. However, the Jumbos were unable to upset the No. 12 Williams Ephs, who came away with a 10-5 victory.
Prior to this game, Tufts had been averaging 11.75 goals per game. On Wednesday, though, the Jumbos scored just five in their third conference loss of the season.
While the Ephs did not blow out the home team, they were in control throughout the entire 60 minutes, never once allowing the Jumbos to take the lead. Senior captain Rebecca McGovern netted the Ephs first goal of the day just a minute and a half into the game. Six and a half minutes later, junior midfielder Rebecca Bell added her only goal of the day.
Early on, it appeared that the game was going to be a defensive battle, as the score remained 2-0 through 13 minutes of play. The Jumbos defense was doing an excellent job of protecting junior goalkeeper Rachel Gallimore, and sophomore midfielder Brigid Bowser put Tufts on the board with a free position shot around the 17-minute mark.
Shortly after Bowsers goal, however, things went south.
Williams scored four consecutive goals in a span of six minutes. Junior attacker Bridget Malicki, the teams second-leading scorer, drove past the Tufts defenders with ease, scoring two of her four goals during this stretch.
Williams scored once more in the first half, but junior attacker Kali DiGate responded with a goal of her own for Tufts on a pass from senior captain Gabby Horner, for a 7-2 halftime score.
We just wanted to come out strong, Williams senior goalkeeper Ali Piltch said. We know Tufts is a strong team, and they are fast in the midfield especially. They have some great goal scorers, so we wanted to be sure to be ready for that [challenge]. Getting the goal in the beginning allowed us to pick it up defensively, especially in the first half.
You know, as they always say in the NESCAC, any day, anyone can beat anyone, Piltch added.
Falling behind early has been Tufts Achilles heel thus far this season, and Williams exploited that flaw well. The Jumbos were down just 2-1, but after allowing their opponents to score four straight goals, there was no way back from a five-goal deficit for the home team.
Despite the wide margin, Tufts did its best to fight back at the start of the second half, as Bowser sprinted past the entire Williams defense and launched the ball past Piltch to reduce the deficit to four. Williams Malicki responded three minutes later with her fourth and final goal of the game.
Sophomore attacker Caroline Ross kept the Jumbos alive by netting two free position shots, which brought the score to 8-5. That was as close as it would get for the rest of the game.
The comeback effort flagged as quickly as it had gathered momentum, as the Jumbos could not muster a single goal in the final 14 minutes of the game. Piltch and her defense hunkered down, and the Ephs offense added two more goals to seal the win.
Williams now sits alone in second place in the NESCAC, and it concludes its season with games later this month against Amherst and Middlebury, the first- and second-place teams in the conference, respectively.
Every game in the NESCAC is a big game, Piltch added. Thats true of Amherst and Middlebury, but it is also true of Wesleyan ... Hamilton and Colby, so every game is important, and that is how we like to treat it.
As for the Jumbos, they sit in the bottom half of the NESCAC with a 5-4 overall record and a 2-3 in-conference record.
The team still has five conference games left, but Tufts has lost three straight games at Bello Field and finds itself quickly slipping away in the standings from the NESCAC powerhouses. The Jumbos will need to turn things around within its next several games.
I think that we had good moments on the field, but we didnt put all of the pieces together, and thats what you need to do at the end of the day, Tufts junior midfielder Lindsey Walker said. I think our mindset is to go back to the basics. We really just need to focus on the fundamentals, and if we can do all those right, were going to come out on the field with a win.
