Defense. Defense. Defense. Chris McGinley. More defense.
The field hockey team clinched the regionals, and a bid to the NCAA tournament, with its noticeably defensive 2-0 victory over unranked West Chester last night on the Holuba Hall Turf.
Once again, the Lady Lions came out to a match with intentions of an offensive game. Once again, the opposing team forced the Lady Lions to play a very defensive match.
Penn State is now used to this type of match, and rose to the occasion nicely.
“They played strong. They came at us, they were ready to go,” freshman goalkeeper Shelly Meister said. “But, our defense, as usual, turned it on. We’re just never down, even on slow games like this one, we always play to our fullest potential.”
The defensive effort, combined with two unassisted goals from McGinley, was enough to get the win, clinch the regionals, and secure a bid for the Lady Lions in the NCAA tournament. Morett, however, feels some work is necessary before they get there.
“The win clinched the regionals, and we’ll get a bid just out of our region alone,” Coach Char Morett said. “It is nice to know that we are in, but now we have to work on the things we need to put us in contention.”
The Lady Lions have been working on spreading out their field play, and being more accurate on their possession passes. They were not given much of a chance to show if the work was worthwhile; West Chester came out with an attack that was stronger than Morett and the Lady Lions had expected.
“I thought West Chester played really well tonight,” Morett said. “Better than we had expected. We didn’t posses the ball as well as we had anticipated, and we didn’t work to spread things out.”
West Chester Coach Kathy Krannebitter said that she was pleased with her teams performance, and said her team is not as bad as the record shows.
“We are a lot better than our record shows,” Krannebitter said. “All of our losses were really close.”
Krannebitter said that her team tends to play to the talent of the opposing team.
“We play up to the competition,” she said. “When we play great teams like Penn State, we play great, but it just wasn’t enough.”
West Chester’s great play was enough to shut down Penn State’s typically potent penalty corner, and silenced the Lady Lion attack.
The penalty corner defensive on both sides was particularly strong. Meister had eight saves on the night, and had some of her best saves on the penalty corners.
“Their shots were coming hard,” Meister said. “As usual, our defense countered strong. This is the defense we will need to keep playing to continue winning, especially this weekend on through the tournament.”