A magical season now includes the first conference tournament championship in program history.<\/p>\n
A Colorado women\u2019s lacrosse team already stellar on defense turned in arguably its top defensive performance of the season on Saturday, putting the clamps on one of the top offenses in the nation while claiming the Big 12 Conference tournament championship with an 8-6 win at No. 4 Florida.<\/p>\n
The 14th-ranked Buffs already were assured of an NCAA Tournament bid, but Saturday\u2019s victory gives CU an automatic berth in the 29-team field and gives CU an opportunity to potentially host when the tournament starts next week. The Buffs were ranked 10th in the most recent Division I Committee\u2019s top 10 and owned a No. 10 mark in the RPI before defeating the Gators on their home turf.<\/p>\n
The top eight seeds get to host, and the NCAA Tournament field will be announced on Sunday night. CU (14-3) posted its seventh consecutive win and erased an 0-6 mark all-time against Florida. The Buffs improved to 4-3 against ranked foes this season, playing all seven of those games on the road.<\/p>\n
The Gators entered the match with the fourth-ranked scoring offense in the nation, while the Buffs boasted the nation\u2019s top scoring defense. It was CU\u2019s defense that dominated the strength-against-strength matchup, holding the Gators to a season-low scoring total for the second time this season while limiting Florida to just nine shots on goal. Buffs goalie Elena Oh, the Big 12 Goalkeeper of the Year, finished with seven saves.<\/p>\n
CU\u2019s Maddie Shoup scored four goals for the third time in four games to pace the Buffs\u2019 offense, while freshman Rowan Edson added a pair of goals.<\/p>\n
Florida led 2-1 at the end of the first quarter, but CU held a Gators team that had been averaging 16.2 goals per game to just four more goals the rest of the way. Edson scored both of her goals during the second quarter as the Buffs outscored Florida 4-1 in the frame to take a 5-3 lead at halftime. Florida scored the first goal of the second half to pull within 5-4, but a pair of goals from Shoup gave the Buffs a 7-4 lead going into the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Shoup was named the tournament\u2019s Most Outstanding Player after recording eight goals and one assist in CU\u2019s two wins. The overall shots were even at 27-27, but the Buffs posted a 16-13 edge on shots on goal.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s match had been moved up to 9:30 a.m. MT on Friday due to expected weather in the Gainesville area, but weather delays ultimately pushed the opening draw close to the original start time of 2 p.m. MT. The NCAA Tournament selection show on Sunday night begins at 7 p.m. MT on ESPNU.<\/p>\n
No. 14 Colorado women\u2019s lacrosse 8, No. 4 Florida 6<\/p>\n
Colorado\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 1 4 2 1 \u2014 8<\/p>\n
Florida\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 1 2 1 2 \u2014 6<\/p>\n
Goals \u2014 Colorado: Shoup 4, Edson 2, Assini, Ryan. Florida: Hamilton 2, DeWitt 2, Davies, Hoskins.<\/p>\n
Assists \u2014 Colorado: None. Florida: Bragg, DeWitt, Hahn, Koury.<\/p>\n
Goalies (Min.-goals allowed-saves) \u2014 Colorado: Oh (60-6-7). Florida: Radebaugh (60-8-8).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A magical season now includes the first conference tournament championship in program history. A Colorado women\u2019s lacrosse team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[53449,100328,100329,111,100327,16516,16519,28,30,29,48181,114,266,115,110],"class_list":["post-255940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-boulder","tag-boulder-county","tag-buffzone","tag-college-sports","tag-college-lacrosse","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-news","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-front-range","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}