The No. 2 Florida lacrosse team will play yet another ranked team Monday night.
The Gators (8-0) face co-No. 15 Towson (6-0) at 7:30 at Donald R. Dizney Stadium.
This will be Florida’s third consecutive game against a ranked opponent and its fifth in the past seven games.
UF coach Amanda O’Leary has guided the Gators to a 5-0 record against ranked opponents this season.
The Tigers’ No. 2-ranked defense enters the match allowing just under five goals per game.
The Gators have fared well against teams that entered last weekend in the top 20 in average goals allowed per game. They put up 11 goals in an overtime victory on March 1 against Syracuse, the No. 19 scoring defense in the country.
On Friday, Florida put 16 shots in the back of the net against Boston College’s sixth-ranked defense.
Florida will look to counteract the visitor’s fearsome backline with its quick and diverse attack on goal. The Gators have scored a pair of goals within a minute of each other on 23 occasions this season. They did it four times Friday night.
With 109 total goals scored this season, UF features five double-digit goal scorers and six double-digit point scorers. In eight games, Florida has seen eight players record a combined 14 hat tricks.
Junior midfielder Mollie Stevens, who has four hat tricks this season, will not be available to play against the Tigers. With 19:08 left in the second half of Friday’s game, she hit an opposing player with her stick and was given a red card, which warrants a suspension for both the remainder of the current game as well as the following game.
The tenacious Towson defense could present a physical and scrappy game for the Gators, but junior attacker Sammi Burgess said that her team needs to reevaluate how it handles team that gets under its skin.
"We won’t let it happen again," she said.
Despite the loss of an obvious game-changer, O’Leary said she felt that the players who filled Stevens’ role did a great job of doing so.
Of the three goals scored following Stevens’ red card, two were scored by non-starters. Freshman midfielder Madi Hall scored her third goal of the season with 4:54 left in the game and senior attacker Devon Schneider scored her second goal of the match less than a minute later.
With a win over Towson, the Gators would go to 9-0 on the season and 6-0 against ranked opponents, setting themselves up to be in the conversation for the No. 1 ranking with Maryland, which was deemed the unanimous top school in the most recent Inside Lacrosse poll.
But the rankings are the least of O’Leary’s worries going into tonight’s match of two undefeated teams.
"That’s not our decision," O’Leary said of the rankings. "...We just need to start preparing for Towson. That’s kinda where our mind is right now."
Contact Kyle Brutman at kbrutman@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @KBrut13.
UF's Mollie Stevens attempts to make a play on the ball during Florida's 12-11 win over Michigan on Feb. 13, 2016, at Donald R. Dizney Stadium.
