April 19, 2009

Final Stats

RICHMOND, Va. - The Saint Joseph's women's lacrosse team suffered its worst loss of the season, 12-5, at Richmond on Sunday afternoon. The Spiders led 8-1 to start the game and never looked back as Jenna Martino and Helene Tursi scored two goals each for the Hawks.

Saint Joseph's (9-7, 5-2 Atlantic 10) was in search of its first win against Richmond and their first regular season crown with a win, but it wasn't meant to be as the Hawks were held scoreless for the first 26:24 of the game. Tursi took a Julie Mineweaser pass to notch SJU's first goal.

At that point, Richmond (6-10, 5-2 A-10) had already put four on the board and would put on four more before Saint Joseph's could score again. Abby Renninger and Martino broke a scoreless streak of 15:26 with back-to-back tallies midway through the second half. Renninger assisted on Martino's goal, which came with 16:45 remaining and the Hawks down 8-3.

UR responded with two goals of its own to open a 10-3 lead before Martino scored her second of the game and team-leading 49th of the season with 12:46 to go. Martino needs just two more goals to match the single-season SJU goals record of 51 set by Shannon Fiete (1996) and Bernadette Smith (2001).

Two more Richmond goals were scored with less than five minutes to go as Saint Joseph's was in its worst deficit of the season at 12-4. Tursi scored a last-minute goal to cap the scoring for her second tally of the game.

Goalkeeper Suzy Herlihy played 35:42 of game time, allowing seven goals and making three saves. Katlin LaBarbera filled in for the rest of the game, playing the final 24:18 with seven saves and giving up five goals.

Richmond improves to 8-0 against the Hawks all-time and SJU will have another opportunity to reverse that losing streak on Friday at the Atlantic 10 Championship.

The Spiders earned the #2 seed with the win on Sunday and Saint Joseph's was pushed to #3. The two would've matched up in the same game regardless of today's result due to Massachusetts winning its game at St. Bonaventure to secure the regular season title. The SJU-UR tilt is set for 3:30 at Temple's Geasey Field.