ALLIANCE, Ohio – The Otterbein women's lacrosse team dropped another high-scoring affair with Mount Union Saturday afternoon, ultimately finishing on the lower end of a 17-14 shootout in Alliance.

The Cardinals, losing 21-16 to the Purple Raiders earlier this season in Westerville, finish the regular season with an 8-5 overall record. Mount Union, 6x defending Ohio Athletic Conference champion, bumps itself up to a 12-1 mark.

This rematch saw both sides trade scores early, including two off the stick of Macey Buchanan, en route to an early 3-3 deadlock. The game of runs then saw Mount Union deliver a 5-0 stretch approaching the midway point of the first half…

Otterbein weathered that storm and fought back, netting four of the next five goals and ultimately heading into the break down just 10-7. The Cards later trailed 11-7 but didn't waver, piecing together a nice 7-3 scoring run to tie the contest up at 14-14.

The deadlock remained as the clock ticked under 10 minute, before the Purple Raiders found a few difference-making sequences. Mount would score the go-ahead goal at 8:43, then add insurance scores exactly one minute apart at 3:17 and 2:17 to prevail down the stretch.

Otterbein captured 21 of 33 draw controls (nine from Buchanan) but also committed 26 turnovers. Mount Union gave the ball away just 11 times. Leah McNutt tallied an important 16 saves in the cage for Otterbein.

Kaitlyn Murphy and Katie Clark both scored five times to lead Mount Union, while Emily Willms had four to pace the Cardinal attack. She was complemented by hat tricks from Julia Karas and Cameron Finnegan. Otterbein went just 1 of 6 on free-position attempts.

UP NEXT:
Otterbein will occupy the No. 4 seed and host a quarterfinal game in the OAC Tournament come Tuesday evening. Stay tuned to otterbeincardinals.com and all of our social media outlets for continued coverage!