No. 15 Pioneers Top No. 25 Buffs

BOULDER – Despite playing a strong second half, the University of Colorado lacrosse team was unable to overcome a six-goal deficit from the first half (8-2) and fell 9-7 on Tuesday afternoon to the 15^th-ranked University of Denver at Kittredge Field.

"It's disappointing for us," head coach Ann Elliott Whidden said. "I thought we played better in the second half, but that's not good enough. We know Denver is a good team and we need to execute better offensively. We didn't do a good job and our best players didn't do a good job of stepping up to put pressure on them. I thought our other players stepped up, but at the end of the day it wasn't good enough."

Denver improved to 8-2 on the year with the win, while the Buffs are now 5-5 (4-1 Pac-12).

WHAT HAPPENED: Denver recorded the first five goals of the game before Sophie Castillo found the back of the net for the Buffs' first marker of the game at 22:07. Sadie Grozier tallied the second goal of the contest for the Buffs at 16:58 before the Pioneers rattled off three straight, bringing the score to 8-2 with six minutes left in the half.

Neither team would score in the final six minutes of the half, as well as during the first 12 minutes in the second half before Jen Mistretta recorded a goal off a pass from Samantha Nemirov, cutting DU's lead to five (8-3). But just 90 seconds later, DU went back up by six with another marker from Bea Behrins (9-3).

With less than 10 minutes on the clock, Charlie Rudy was able to score for the Buffs on a free-position attempt, giving CU its fourth goal of the game. DU was issued a yellow card shortly after CU's goal, and the Buffs were able to make the Pioneers pay with Rudy's second goal of the game as she scored on the player advantage.

Rudy scored her third straight goal with 5:48 left in the half, shaving the Pioneer's advantage to three (9-6). The Buffs were attacking and with 3:51 remaining, Nemirov scored off the feed from Grozier (9-7). The Buffs kept the pressure on, but were not able to complete the comeback as the clock expired, giving the Pioneers the win.

KEY STATISTIC: It was a tale of two halves. CU got out to a slow start in the first half, but showed much improvement in the second. Most notably, CU had five saves in the first half while allowing eight goals. In the second half, CU had 12 saves and let in just one goal.

"I think defensively we adjusted, but at the end of the day we adjusted by actually executing the game plan we set out to do. We have to do that from the beginning, but we didn't," Whidden said.

NOTABLE:

Samantha Nemirov's two-points extended her points-streak to 30 straight games, which is the CU record. She broke the record of 29 games, which had been held by Darby Kiernan. Nemirov scored in all 20 games last season and has tallied at least one point in each of the 10 games this year.
This was the sixth meeting between the two teams. DU now leads the series 4-2.

TEAM LEADERS:

Colorado

Points: 9

Goals: 7

Assists: 2

Draw Controls: 7

Ground Balls: 16

Saves: 12

Denver

Points: 16

Goals: 9

Assists: 7

Draw Controls: 11

Ground Balls: 22

Saves: 7

UP NEXT: Colorado will hit the road to start the second half of Pac-12 Conference play, facing Southern California on April 5, in Los Angeles.

QUOTEABLE:
Head Coach Ann Elliott Whidden
General statement
It's disappointing for us, I thought we played better in the second half but that's not good enough. We know Denver is a good team and we need to execute better offensively. We didn't do a good job and our best players didn't do a good job of stepping up to put pressure on them. I thought our other players stepped up, but at the end of the day it wasn't good enough.

On second half
I think defensively we adjusted, but at the end of the day we adjusted by actually executing the game plan we set out to do. We have to do that from the beginning, but we didn't. Denver is a very good team, they have a lot of great players, they have a lot of great offensive players and they play very aggressive defensively. I'm sure Liza might say that they didn't play well in the second half, but we didn't pay well in the first half, we have to do a better job of that. Then we played with a little sense of urgency and switched things up on attack, which is on us a little bit but is also on our layers to execute and we didn't do that.

On Charlie Rudy
I think for Charlie, she didn't have a good weekend last weekend and I think for all those guys, we challenge them and try to get them to be confident and bounce back. For us to be successful we need more people stepping up like that. It can't always be the same people, we need everybody doing it. At the same time, we have to find consistency offensively because we can't win games if we can't score goals.

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Team Stats

Charlie Rudy

Sophie Castillo

Sadie Grozier

Samantha Nemirov

Players Mentioned

Sophie Castillo

Sadie Grozier

Darby Kiernan

Jen Mistretta

Samantha Nemirov

Charlie Rudy

Players Mentioned

Sophie Castillo

Sadie Grozier

Darby Kiernan

Jen Mistretta

Samantha Nemirov

Charlie Rudy