“We are really happy with second place,” senior captain midfielder Kaela Barker said. “Our goal was top two. But, I wish we had beaten Towson to make that more clear.”

Towson’s Katie DeFlippo scored the only goal of the game just under seven minutes into game play. The Huskies tried to catch up, but the two teams tied for number of total shots at 11 each and saves at five each. Northeastern earned one more penalty corner than the Tigers, seven and six respectively.

Barker said the Towson playing field is a field turf as opposed to the AstroTurf the team is used to. She said the field turf changes the game and slows it down significantly.

“I don’t think we adapted well,” Barker said.

Head coach Cheryl Murtagh said the Towson game was disappointing and a tough game overall, but that Friday’s game against Drexel was a different story.

“Drexel is a good team,” Murtagh said. “They had a lot on the line. They were trying to compete for a spot in the CAA playoffs. To tie the game and win in six minutes was a great thing to do.”

Drexel’s Meghan Plank scored first in the game at 27:41. Senior forward Annie Clayman scored next to tie the game at 64:23 directly following a Dragon timeout. Junior forward Nicky Graham earned her second assist of the night on the goal. She earned a second assist when she got the ball to junior forward Crystal Poland off of a penalty corner with 36 seconds left in regulation. This was Poland’s 26th goal of the season.

“It was pretty exciting,” Barker said. “We knew that this game was a must-win.”

Barker talked about how the team pulled junior goalkeeper Lizzie Priest out of goal and put senior Beth Cobby in the field as an extra player for 1:08 near the end of the game.

Because Northeastern is second in conference standings, they get a bye for the first round of CAA playoffs. Their next game will be Saturday, Nov. 5 when they play the winner of today’s Hofstra versus Towson game.

The Huskies beat Hofstra 2-1 Oct. 21. Murtagh said the Pride are a good team and if the Huskies match up with them again it will not be an easy game.

“They are a very good offensive team,” she said. “We need to play our best game to beat anyone at this point.”

Part of the Pride’s offensive spark is regularly ignited by forward Genna Kovar, who was neck-and-neck with Poland all season in the quest for the national scoring title. Both finished the regular season with 26 goals, but Poland technically won the title, averaging 1.37 goals-per-game (in 19 games total) to Kovar’s 1.30 (20 games).

Barker said that the team is excited and ready to compete for title in the upcoming days.
“We are going in with the attitude that we can win. Old Dominion is number one in the whole country, but we have the attitude that we can beat them and bring home the banner,” she said.
If the Huskies win the CAA championship, they will earn an automatic bid to the NCAA playoffs. However, if they don’t win  there is still a possibility they will make the playoffs with an at-large bid because of how well they have played so far this season.

Their overall record is 13-6, 5-3 in CAA play, and undefeated at home after seven games.
Last season the Huskies were 10-10 going into the first round of the CAA playoffs, where they lost 4-0 to Old Dominion.