Spiders are familiar with NCAA women's lacrosse tournament, but haven't seen Loyola in decades
Spiders' senior attack Marissa Brown leads Richmond with 89 points (40 goals, 49 assists).
Richmond women's lacrosse coach Allison Kwolek
- DANIEL SANGJIB MIN/TIMES-DISPATCH
To Marissa Brown, Loyola-Maryland qualifies as a familiar opponent. Brown, a University of Richmond senior lacrosse attack, lives near Annapolis, Md., and has watched many a Greyhounds game over the years. She knows several members of the Baltimore-based team, and keeps in touch with them.
The Spiders (17-3) meet No. 11 Loyola (15-4) Friday at 4 p.m., in Princeton, N.J., in the first round of the NCAA tournament. “I think they’re obviously a really good team, but I do think we match up really well against them,” said Brown, UR’s leader in points, with 89 (40 goals, 49 assists).
The rest of the Spiders will have to take Brown’s word for it, because to most of them, Loyola is an unfamiliar opponent, despite the relative proximity of the similar schools. UR started its program in 1983 and played Loyola on a regular basis until 2001, when Richmond joined the A-10. The Spiders and Greyhounds have not met since.
“Richmond,” the A-10 champion, appeared alongside “Loyola,” the Patriot League champion, on the bracket revealed during the NCAA Division I Women’s Lacrosse selection show Sunday night and UR coach Allison Kwolek went right to her phone to check out the Greyhounds’ results. Later that night, she started video review of their games and called some other coaches to get their perspective on Loyola.
Though Kwolek and the Spiders gained their intelligence on the Greyhounds on the fly as the week progressed, “I think this year what’s great is we know what it looks like to go into the NCAA tournament,” she said. “We know what that prep looks like, what practice [looks] like.”
Richmond last year won the A-10 and then traveled to Towson, Md., where the Spiders in their first NCAA tournament experience since 2007 allowed 15 first-half goals on the way to a 24-18 loss to Northwestern.
More than half of the Spiders’ 30 players are from New York or New Jersey, which is why Kwolek projected substantial support for UR at Princeton University, in Princeton, N.J.
On Sunday, the winner of UR-Loyola faces the winner of Princeton-Wagner.
“I feel like last year after we went to the NCAA tournament, it kind of did put us on the map. And this year, going back-to-back, I feel like we have really stepped into that role, like we’re a team on that national level that should get recognition," said Brown. "That’s something that’s been super-exciting for my [senior] class to kind of bring us to that national level."
Game notes:
https://admin.richmondspiders.com/s...ments/2019/5/9/URWLAXNotes_NCAAFirstRound.pdf