By: Liam Hoffmann
BROCKPORT, NY—The Brockport Golden Eagles ended the regular season with a 20-10 win atop the Buffalo State Bengals behind a seven goal third quarter. Alayna Foos and Cassidy Burnash scored five goals apiece en route to the victory. Brockport has won two straight games with postseason SUNYAC play slated to begin Saturday. Burnash is confident in the team’s abilities headed into the playoffs.
“We’ll play like we know how to play, we’ve been practicing all year for this,” Burnash said.
Burnash had four helpers and Foos added two. Paige Thowe and Sarah Kilburn each scored hat tricks and Kilburn also won 14 draw controls. Three goals was a season-high for Thowe. Goalie Arianna Reed saved nine shots against 19 shots faced while allowing 10 goals.
Brockport began hot as Burnash found Foos for a low-skipping goal past Bengals netminder Brielle Mum less than a minute into the contest. Kilburn scored her first from the free position with her signature step-down shot minutes later. Buff. State answered quickly with goals from Sage Running Rabbit and Vanessa Willick. With five minutes away, things were knotted at 2.
While the Golden Eagles greatly outshot Buff. State in the first half, good team defense limited Brockport's shot-quality and kept the Bengals in the game. Burnash scored unassisted next before two goals from Buff. State gave the Bengals their first lead of the day. Foos evened the score once more with her only freepo goal and fours were on the scoreboard after a quarter of play. Lum recorded four saves in the period.
“[Lum] made some great saves, I think that’s really important,” Brockport head coach Bryana Glasser said. “We continued to stay in the game, so that’s all that matters.”
With a woman-up, Burnash found Julia Quinlan for a familiar one-timer from just outside the crease granting the advantage back to Brockport. Kilburn then scored with a powerful rip off an assist from Burnash. Once more, though, the Bengals answered with a two-goal run of their own. Brockport followed it with the largest run of the game to that point (3-0) by way of Kilburn, Burnash, and Foos in that order. Kilburn and Foos’ each came with a woman-up. Lauren Rinow slightly closed the gap for Buff. State before the half expired with a free position goal.
Brockport exploded in the third disallowing Buff. State to score a goal while Brockport tallied seven. Two from Foos, one each from Thowe and Hailey Lewkovich and a sub-10-minute hat trick from Burnash got the job done. Kilburn and Tristan Davis dominated at the draw circle as the Bengals didn’t possess the ball for two-thirds of the quarter.
“Tristan and Sarah on the draw did some phenomenal stuff together, so I’m just really proud of them and the focus that they have,” Glasser said.
“We realized what we did wrong in the first half,” Burnash said. “We came together, came up with solutions, told ourselves we’re not going to see mistakes in the second half so we were able to flip the page and have a lot better third quarter.”
Anna Cinquino ended the Bengals’ second-half scoring drought less than 30 seconds into the final frame. Sarah Fineour followed up via Rinow to cut the deficit to seven, however, Willick’s goal two and a half minutes later was the last time the scoreboard heard from Buff. State.
In the fourth, Thowe scored twice in addition to goals from Davis and Amanda Evans. Davis is a usual offensive starter for Brockport, though was delegated to just draw controls for the bulk of the first three quarters of the evening before playing in the offensive zone in the final 15 minutes.
Brockport advances to the SUNYAC playoffs as the No. 4 seed. They’re slated to host the Oswego State Lakers on Saturday in the quarterfinal round.