The No. 9 Georgetown women’s lacrosse team (3-5, 1-0 Big East) started off its Big East schedule with a relatively easy 20-7 victory on the road over conference rival Villanova on Friday before returning home to MultiSport Facility on Sunday, only to fall 15-14 in heartbreaking fashion in quadruple overtime to No. 19 Princeton.

Going into Friday’s game against the Wildcats, the Hoyas were trying to snap out of a minor funk, losing four out of five games to the top four teams in the country – they accomplished their goal in a big way. Just 15 minutes into the game the Blue and Gray had already built an 8-0 lead on their hosts. The Wildcats would respond with a 4-1 mini-run of their own, but the visiting Hoyas responded with a 7-1 run that spanned the intermission and put the game away.

Villanova had no answer for senior attack Molly Ford, who notched a career-high six goals and dished out one assist, or fellow senior midfielder Ashby Kaestner, who scored twice and earned three assists.

“It was nice because everybody got to play,” Head Coach Ricky Fried said of the rout. “Everybody got to contribute, so in that respect it was a good team win.”

It might have been easy for his team to look past the unranked Wildcats to their Sunday opponents, but Fried was happy with how his team took care of business.

“It was our first Big East game, so we were satisfied with where we were and what we did,” he said.

The Blue and Gray knew, however, that a much stiffer test awaited them when they returned to the Hilltop to face a Princeton team that knocked them out of the NCAA tournament in the first round last year.

Georgetown came out of the gate with flying colors. By the 4-minute mark of the first half, the Hoyas had a 3-0 lead thanks to goals from Kaestner and junior attacks Jordy Kirr and Jacqueline Giles.

The Tigers regrouped, though, and responded with a run of their own that was due in large part to excellent draw control during the middle stages of the first half. Princeton had a 6-4 lead when sophomore Barb Previ notched her second and final goal of the game for the Tigers.

Georgetown responded, however, and surged to an 8-7 lead at halftime.

Despite the slim lead that his team held at halftime, Fried was not satisfied with its performance.

“We played pretty well [in the first half],” he said. “[But] there’s still some things we need to do better,

namely shooting.”

The Hoyas looked fresh at the beginning of the second half and quickly jumped out to an 11-8 lead, prompting a time out from Princeton Head Coach Chris Sailer, who was looking for a milestone 300th career victory. Coming out of the time out, however, the goal was disallowed when a routine stick-check revealed that the goal scorer, sophomore midfielder Erin Lovett, had apparently been using an illegal stick.

The Tigers then equalized on two goals by their leading scorer, junior Lizzy Drumm, and the teams traded goals for the rest of the period with both goalies making huge stops in the last few minutes to keep the game tied.

“In the second half we [needed] to play better defense as a whole,” Fried said after the game. “The unfortunate thing about the game is that we had things under our control. We had the opportunities that we wanted to have, and we didn’t finish them.”

The first overtime began auspiciously for the Hoyas as they won the ball right off the draw and kept possession for the better part of the first 3-minute, sudden-death period. The Blue and Gray offense turned it up a notch with about a minute left in the period and got a quality look at the goal with about five seconds left, but Princeton junior goalie Erin Tochihara was up to the task.

The second overtime period played out much like the first, as the hosts won possession immediately and kept it for the rest of the period. Tochihara came up with another huge save on a Kaestner shot with two seconds left, but the Hoyas had perhaps their best chance of the match when Kirr cleanly beat Tochihara over the shoulder with 15 seconds left only to have the ball hit the bottom of the crossbar and bounce out.

“We set up the play we wanted,” Fried said. “We got the play wide open twice. [On] one we missed the feed. … The second one was open, and we hit a pipe.”

Princeton finally won a draw in the third overtime. Georgetown senior goalie Caitlin Formby was forced to make a tough save less than a minute in, but her offense again failed to capitalize on any scoring chances afterward.

The fourth and final overtime also started well for the Hoyas, and Ford had a golden opportunity to end the game when she ran in from behind the net. But she was stopped by Tochihara, and a Georgetown foul gave the Tigers possession. Off the restart Drumm got out in transition and ended the game with

her fifth goal.

Although clearly not pleased with his team’s 2-5 out-of-conference record, Fried still has hope for a good run in the Big East.

“Now the challenge is, `How do we respond?'” Fried said. “We have an opportunity ahead of us. Everybody has got to decide that they still believe, that they still believe in this team. If we do that and come out strong and play hard in the Big East, we’ll be fine. If we feel sorry for ourselves, it’s going to be a tough month.”

The Hoyas return to their conference slate on Saturday when they play host to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at MultiSport Facility.

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