On Thursday afternoon, the Boston College women’s lacrosse team hosted the Yale Bulldogs for an NCAA tournament quarterfinals match-up. The Eagles fought through a close first half, but pulled away by the end and defeated Yale, 18-11.
Coming into the game, the Eagles didn’t look like their dominant selves. They struggled to win draw controls against Stony Brook on Sunday and those struggles continued on Thursday. Yale won ten straight draw controls at one point in the contest and held an early one-goal lead as a result.
But BC, and specifically Emma LoPinto, started to kick things into gear by the end of the second quarter. Down 6-5 to the Bulldogs, LoPinto rattled off five-straight goals herself to make it a 10-6 game. The Yale defense had no answer for her as she cut inside aggressively and put the team on her back. BC star Rachel Clark took over from there by scoring three goals herself in a row, and with another goal from Morgan Smith, the game flipped from a 6-5 deficit to a 14-6 BC lead. The #1 offense in the nation proved it out on the field today.
After some more back and forth to close the game, the Eagles emerged with an 18-11 victory. They have secured an appearance in the 2025 Final Four at Gillette Stadium as a result, making it their eighth-straight appearance as a program. You will be able to watch them in Foxboro on Friday May 23rd against #3 Northwestern, the program that they faced in the 2023 and 2024 national title games.