Hofstra women's lacrosse dominates Old Dominion

A major key to the 16th ranked Hofstra women’s lacrosse team’s success in 2010 has been draw controls with the Pride fifth in the nation at grabbing these crucial possessions entering Sunday’s game against Old Dominion. Hofstra’s success on draws continued against the Monarchs with the Pride dominating this key statistical category 20-6 in a 16-8 home win to improve to 7-3 and 2-0 in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA).

Part of Hofstra’s success in being able to gaining processions after goals has been the versatility of being able to deploy multiple players to take draws depending on matchups. Against Old Dominion Hofstra had 10 players win draw controls led by senior attacker Corrine Gandolfi with six.  Morgan credits Hofstra’s success in this category to her assistant coach Tanya Kotowicz, who as a player at Connecticut was second on the Huskies in draw controls during her senior year in 2005.

“She has taught these girls, 'OK this setup against this draw, this is what you do, this is where you put the people on the outside,” said Morgan of Kotowicz. “She is awesome at it.”

In addition to draw controls Hofstra also dominated in shots on net against Old Dominion 41-25. Despite the convincing win Morgan felt her team should have scored even more goals because of their statistical dominance. “Winning 20-6 [in draws] we should be winning a lot more on the scoreboard and having so many more shots than they had we should have been up by more,” said Morgan. “I’m a little frustrated by our shooting percentage.”

The Old Dominion game was "Senior Day" with eight Hofstra players competing in their second to last home game. If Hofstra can capture the CAA regular season however the Pride would get to play at Shuart Stadium even more by having the right to the conference tournament on May 6 and 8.

For the second straight year Hofstra has begun the CAA season 2-0 but after failing to make the conference playoffs the last two seasons despite finishing 4-3, Morgan said the ability to not look ahead on the schedule will be a key. Hofstra will next be in action this weekend at George Mason on Friday and James Madison on Sunday. “It is going to be a big weekend for us," said Morgan. “They are going to work hard this week in practice that is for sure because we are not satisfied.”