Tiernan’s hat trick wasted in loss to Marquette

Senior midfielder Nicole Tiernan had a hat trick in the first half, but the Owls lost 12-10 to Marquette on Saturday at Valley Fields.

After getting out to a three goal lead at halftime, the Owls (9-5, 1-3 Big East) saw it slip away as Marquette University came from behind to win 12-10 at Valley Fields.

Led by their leading goal-scorer, junior attacker Julianna Shearer, the Golden Eagles scored seven consecutive goals to erase an 8-5 deficit. Shearer scored all three of her goals on the seven goal run, surpassing her teammate senior Hayley Baas’ single-season record of 28 goals. Sophomore midfielder Allison Lane scored two of her three goals on the run for Marquette.

Sophomore attacker Riley Hill helped the Golden Eagles out to a good start, scoring the first and third goal of the game to put Marquette up 3-0. The Owls answered with a 3-0 run of their own, scoring eight of the next ten goals to take an 8-5 halftime lead.

Senior midfielder Nicole Tiernan tallied a hat trick in the first half and junior midfielder Morgan Glassford scored twice in the opening 30 minutes. After Glassford’s second goal, Marquette held the Owls scoreless for 26 minutes, 56 seconds, until senior attacker Avery Longstaff scored with 4:12 remaining in the game.

“I think they just started to understand the spacing a little bit and things didn’t open up as quickly,” coach Bonnie Rosen said of Marquette’s defense. “But our issues was really just unforced errors. Dropping balls under pressure. Just kind of making errant passes and every time we turned the ball over we really gave up goals on the other end.”

Temple outshot Marquette 30-20 and each team had 17 shots on goal, but the Owls turned the ball over 21 times compared to Marquette’s 15. Rosen said her team “played with a sense of panic” Saturday.

“I think we got a team that just wants it really bad,” Rosen said. “That can sometimes hurt you on game day when the ball doesn’t bounce the right way and they start to feel they’re out of control and today was one of those days people just tried harder instead of smarter. [Some things were] uncharacteristic. We missed ground balls or backing each other up or allowed an open cutter to get to goal and we threw the ball away on offensive transition. Again, Marquette played a nice game against us, but we were definitely our own worst enemy today.”

After Longstaff’s goal, senior attacker Rachel Schwaab scored with 1:50 remaining to cut the deficit to two. The Owls won the ensuing draw control and got four shots off on offense, but none hit the net. Having lost three of their last four contests, the Owls are currently in a three-way tie for fifth in the Big East. The team will face Villanova, which is also 1-3 in conference play, Wednesday.

“As a coach, I know we have all the pieces to be able to do it,” Rosen said. “So it’s really the answer lies in just working hard in practice and we’ll try and make sure we’re keeping the pressure on with execution in practice so that come game day we’re a little bit better at kind of being ready for how to execute when things matter.”

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