Adelphi advances to quarterfinals in NCAA Division II women's lacrosse tournament

The Adelphi women’s lacrosse team huddled around coach Pat McCabe. For 45 minutes, the veteran squad had found itself in a taut contest with Wilmington (Delaware). With 15 minutes separating them from advancing in the NCAA Division II Tournament or having their season come to a conclusion, the message among the group, Alexandra Leggio recalled afterward, was to get back to basics.

“Go out there and everyone do their part. We always talk about the little things and how the little things lead to big plays,” Leggio said. “We just had to button up the loose ends in the fourth quarter, and I think we did the little things right. Which led us to end the game and close it out the way we know how to.”

Adelphi beat Wilmington, 15-11, on Saturday afternoon at a rain-soaked Motamed Field. The Panthers, the top seed in the East Region, will host Pace, which topped Mercy, 13-12, on Saturday, in next Saturday’s quarterfinals.

The teams have met twice this season, with Adelphi winning 18-8 on March 25 and 14-13 in last Saturday’s Northeast 10 Conference championship game.

“They know us. We know them,” McCabe said. “We’ll prepare this week like we normally do. There’s nothing they’re going to throw at us that’s going to surprise us. And vice versa.”

Adelphi’s first-ever matchup against Wilmington (19-3) was a back-and-forth game.

Entering the contest, the Panthers had won 13 in a row and had outscored opponents 278-178. Fourth-seeded Wilmington had outlasted fifth-seeded Dominican, 15-11, on Thursday. That win was part of a 10-game winning streak for the Wildcats, whose average margin of victory this season was 10.98 goals per game.

“It’s always tough this time of year, playing a team we’ve never played before [and] not quite knowing what to expect from them other than the little that we’ve seen,” McCabe said. “They came out and they played really hard and they gave us a tough time . . . This time of year, you come out one [goal] ahead of them and you feel good about it. And you move on.”

Adelphi brought a 12-8 lead into the fourth quarter that was cut to 13-10 five minutes and 10 seconds into the quarter when Wilmington’s Kirra Crowley sandwiched goals around Leggio’s sixth of the day.

Leggio was backed by Ashley Kolomechuk and Rita Sefransky, who each recorded hat tricks for Adelphi (14-4), and Julia Foppiano finished with two goals and four assists.

“We have so many offensive threats up and down the field,” Leggio said.

Kolomechuk and Sefransky scored their third goals of the game 1:13 apart to extend the lead to 15-10 and Crowley scored her fourth goal with four seconds remaining.

“They were a good team. They fought hard,” Foppiano said. “We just had to figure out what they were doing defensively, offensively just to get a step up on them.”

Adelphi also had to resolve Wilmington’s two-headed goaltending tandem of Allison Schiavone and Ashleigh Lawry. As he has all season, Wildcats coach Kevin Day rotated the goalies during the game. Schiavone played the first and third quarters and Lawry was in net for the second and fourth quarters.

Schiavone yielded seven goals and Lawry allowed eight.

“These girls came in basically statistically equal,” Day said. “It’s almost impossible to pick a starter at this point.”