Florida made it onto the scoreboard at the Dizney Stadium on Saturday within the blink of an eye. Just 20 seconds after Florida controlled the opening draw of the game, junior midfielder Shannon Gilroy scored the first goal of the game. Gilroy followed up that performance with a second goal just two minutes later, extending Florida’s lead to 2-0.
“When she gets that draw and she runs and is able to put us on the board it’s absolutely a momentum boost,” Coach Amanda O’Leary said.
But Gilroy was just one of 10 Gators who scored a goal in Florida’s first conference meet of the season. The No. 5 Gators (7-1, 1-0 American Lacrosse Conference) defeated Michigan (0-4, 0-1 ALC) at home, 20-4.
“I thought it was a great team win,” O’Leary said. “I thought offensively we executed the game plan and defensively I was really proud of the fact that we were getting double teams and slides.”
Junior midfielder Nora Barry scored two goals and had one assist but she credits Florida’s underclassman. Six of UF’s 20 goals were made by freshman.
“A lot of our freshman got some experience on the offensive end,” Barry said.
Freshman Mollie Stevens scored three goals, adding to her seven so far this season. Freshmen Sammi Burgess and Carli Marsh scored two and one goals respectively.
“We got everybody in and that was something that we always talk about. There can’t be a drop-off, everybody needs pull their weight,” O’Leary said. “I thought that the people coming off the bench did exactly what we asked them to do.”
Sam Darcangelo scored her fourth goal of the afternoon when she received the ball from Marsh, who picked up the ground ball on a Michigan turnover. In a one-on-one with Michigan goalie Allison Silber it took Darcangelo less than three seconds to score. The two extend Florida’s lead over Michigan to 12-0.
“She’s doing a lot of the work prior to getting open,” O’Leary said. “She’s kind of doing picks and screens so that she can free herself.”
The Wolverines scored their first goal 21 minutes into the first half. They were able to repeat that with a second goal coming just minutes later, putting them on the board at 12-2.
The second half was more of the same as the Gators sealed the deal by holding Michigan to just two goals while scoring seven more for Florida.
O’Leary believes Florida’s 22 draw controls versus Michigan’s four made the difference in the win.
“I think we saw against Loyola how important draw control is…it’s game changing,” O’Leary said. “And when we went out and had 22 draw controls that means the ball’s in our stick 22 more times.”
Florida narrowly defeated Loyola in its last outing on Tuesday. The down to the wire game ended as a Gator win 14-13 in the frigid Maryland cold.
“It definitely took a lot of mentality out of all of us because coming from such a hard game to this game our mentality probably wasn’t the greatest,” Gilroy said. “But we picked it up in the beginning and we just went on from there.”
A statistic O’Leary wasn’t necessarily pleased with was UF’s 18 ground balls to Michigan’s 17.
“The ground balls are what makes me a little nervous, they were almost event,” O’Leary said. “And that’s something we need to be more aware of and we need to do a better job on that stat for sure.”
Follow Erica A. Hernandez on Twitter @EricaAlyssa
