Offense Continues To Stagger Against BU

In its excitement to kick off the Ivy League season, the Harvard women’s soccer team somehow managed to look past one of the nation’s top teams.

The Crimson (0-6-1) played a sluggish, unfocused first half en route to a 2-0 loss at No. 14 Boston University (BU) and the embarrassment of entering its league schedule without a win.

It took only four minutes for the Terriers (6-2-1) to jump out to a 1-0 lead, as senior Paula Moniz sent a cross into the Harvard box and found freshman Emily Pallotta for a one-timer past Crimson keeper Lauren Mann.

BU struck again in the 17th minute, with Moniz again delivering the key pass. This time, the senior took a corner kick from the right side and freshman Casey Brown was waiting at the back post for an easy header into the net.

“In the first half, we were just completely unfocused and unmotivated,” co-captain Laura Odorzyck said. “We couldn’t even string passes together.”

“We know we can do a lot more than that,” freshman forward Christina Hagner said. “We all thought that the first half was an embarrassment.”

A halftime lecture from Harvard head coach Erica Walsh seemed to focus the team, which came out of the break with offensive aggressiveness that earned it three corner kicks in the first five minutes of the frame. Nothing materialized, however, and the Crimson only registered its first shot on goal in the seventy-second minute of play.

After a challenging non-conference slate that has featured four nationally-ranked opponents, Harvard is certainly ready to move into league play. A few members of the team speculated that the Crimson may have lost focus yesterday by looking ahead to Sunday’s Ivy League opener at Penn.

“We’re excited about the Ivy League season, and that definitely could have been a distraction for us,” Hagner said. “But we shouldn’t be taking any game for granted.”

Harvard greatly missed the defensive intensity of starters Lizzy Nichols and Devon Sherman.

Nichols, a freshman defenseman and the team’s leader in points, suffered a concussion and three facial fractures in a collision during the team’s scoreless tie with St. Mary’s last weekend. She will not play at Penn this weekend but hopes to be back on the field to face Yale at Ohiri Field on September 30.

Sherman, a freshman midfielder, sprained her ankle during the second half of last week’s Friday’s 3-2 loss to Penn State. The timetable for her recovery is unclear, but she hopes to be back on the field in the next two weeks.

As excited as the Crimson may be to get into the Ivy portion of its schedule, the team will have its hands full this weekend at Penn. The Quakers sit atop the league standings with a solid non-conference record of 4-1-1 despite losing some of its momentum yesterday with a 2-0 loss at the hands of crosstown rival Temple.

But at this point, Harvard needs to focus more on its own play than on that of its opponents.

“We need to string full games together if we’re going to win a game this season, period,” Odorzyck said. “Obviously, we need to play better than we did, and I think we really learned a big lesson going into Ivies.”

—Staff writer Emily W. Cunningham can be reached at ecunning@fas.harvard.edu.