Winner Takes the Patriot League: BU Visit No. 15 Lafayette With the Title and Hosting Rights on the Line
Friday night in Easton is as simple as it gets. Win, and you’re champions. Lose, and you’re travelling.
Boston University visit No. 15 Lafayette at 6pm at Rappolt Field, live on ESPN+, and everything in the Patriot League regular season comes down to it. The winner takes the regular-season title, the top seed, and hosting rights for the Patriot League Championship on 5 and 7 November. American and Holy Cross round out the four-team field, but they already know they’ll be on the road.
Lafayette are the team to beat, and the numbers say so plainly. They’re 14-2 overall and a perfect 5-0 in the league, on a five-game win streak, and a perfect 9-0 at home this season. Both of their defeats all year came by a single goal, against No. 1 Northwestern and No. 14 Penn State. Senior Lena Thedrian leads them with 25 points and 11 goals, Katie Gibb has a league-best 14 assists, and goalkeeper Addison Kahn leads every Patriot League keeper in save percentage (.800) and goals-against average (.720). Kahn is tied third nationally in save percentage. That’s a wall.
BU, though, are the defending champions, and they arrive in form. The Terriers are 8-8 and 4-1 in the league after a two-win home weekend of comeback victories over Colgate and Northeastern. Fourteen different Terriers have scored this season, the most since 2018. Sophomore Lucy Johnson leads the whole league in points (29) and goals (13), and graduate student Caroline O’Brien has 22 points from nine goals and four assists. Nicole Lauro, just named Patriot League Midfielder of the Week for the third time this season, scored the winner against Colgate with under five minutes left last Friday.
The all-time series is dead level at 8-8, and the teams have split six meetings in Easton. BU won last year’s Patriot League title game 3-2, ending a six-game losing run in the series. So the Terriers know they can win the big one against this opponent. They just haven’t done it at Rappolt Field lately, and Lafayette haven’t lost there all season.
For our money, Lafayette’s home record and Kahn in goal make them slight favourites. But BU have the league’s top scorer, a deeper scoresheet, and the memory of last year’s final. If this is tight late, and it should be, the team that handles the last ten minutes wins the league. That’s usually the champions. We’ll see if they still are.
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