WESTERVILLE, Ohio – Women's Lacrosse hosted and won its first Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC) Tournament game Tuesday night, knocking off the fifth-seeded Polar Bears of Ohio Northern, 17-9.
The Cardinals also honored a trailblazing senior class of five beforehand with Senior Day being canceled in the regular season due to CoVID protocols.
With the win the Cardinals will head to University Heights on Thursday night for another matchup with the tournaments top seed in John Carroll.
The Cards opened up the scoring for the night just 49 seconds in when
Cameron Finnegan scored on one of just five assisted goals for Otterbein.
Emily Willms tallied her 38th on the season soon after to give the fourth-seed an early 2-0 advantage. ONU answered with a goal but
Julia Karas then netted back-to-back scores for her team-leading 42nd and 43rd.
Ohio Northern then took advantage of a pair of Cardinal yellow cards to score twice man-up, and an even goal, to tie things up at four. With the score in a deadlock Willms began to take over, winning nearly every draw control the rest of the half while the Cards went on a five to one run to close out the opening 30 minutes of action.
Willms once again put on a show to start the second half, this time scoring back-to-back goals less than a minute apart. The Cardinals closed the game out with a six to four margin, this time not allowing ONU to pull close late.
INSIDE THE BOX SCORE:
- The Cardinals went 3-0 against the Polar Bears this season and are now 7-0 all-time against the team from Ada.
- The fifth-seeded Polar Bears were without leading scorer Sydney Kilgore who recently endured a season ending injury.
- ONU in the two previous meetings went above 50% in draw controls, in the third matchup Otterbein went 23 of 28 with Emily Willms winning a single-game record 16.
- Entering tonight's contest, the Cards were ranked top-20 nationally in draw controls.
- Four Cardinals scored multiple times; Willms led the way with seven goals while the senior duo of Finnegan and Karas each netted four. Junior Macey Buchanan netted two goals and caused a turnover.
