Big East Friday: Villanova Clinch Despite Defeat, Old Dominion Take the No. 3 Seed
Friday in the Big East gave us the strange one first: a team that lost and still celebrated.
Villanova fell 2-1 at home to No. 12 Liberty in their regular-season finale, and still punched their ticket to the Big East tournament. The Wildcats started fast, outshooting Liberty 5-0 in the first quarter and earning two penalty corners to Liberty’s none. Erin Mitchell found Ava Borkowski for the opener, Borkowski’s 12th goal of the season, and Villanova led 1-0 at the break. Liberty came back in the third, levelling from a penalty corner through Josefina Tomasi off a feed from Alexia Guedouar, and controlled the rest of the game until a late Villanova corner was saved by Diane Saint Martin. The final push didn’t come off, but the tournament spot did. Villanova finish the regular season 10-7 overall and 3-3 in the Big East.
Old Dominion, meanwhile, took the cleaner route to the same tournament. The Monarchs fended off Georgetown 3-2 to clinch the No. 3 seed. Madison Zalewski scored from the second of two first-quarter penalty corners, with Serena Langendoen helping, before Laney Reiser tied it for Georgetown with 75 seconds left in the half. Lotte Haagmans tied it again for ODU two minutes after Georgetown had gone back in front, and Langendoen won it under four minutes into the fourth quarter from another penalty corner. Georgetown could not respond despite ODU picking up two green cards. ODU outshot Georgetown 17-10 and won the corner count 11-9, with goalkeeper Suus Broers making six saves.
The reward for ODU is a semi-final against the No. 2 seed, Liberty, on Friday 6 November at 4pm in Philadelphia. So Liberty beat Villanova on Friday, and now get ODU in the semi-finals, while Villanova wait to find out who they face. The Big East tournament just got interesting.
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