 Welcome back to the Kathy Riley show presented by Buffalo Wild Wings. I'm Sam Murray joined now with Stevens women's lacrosse head coach Kathy Rayleigh and coach another just one game last week against Albright close one eight seven win talk about bad victory. Well a couple things you know we were gonna be without Keely Bunce which we knew would keep our score total down due to the fact that a lot of things run through Keely some a lot of our set plays run through Keely even in our creative motion style she's often the one who has the assist has the great shot or she's the one who throws the ball to the girl that has the assist so you know missing her we knew we'd be kind of lower in total in goals I really thought we stepped it up on the draw I thought outside of a few kind of minor fouls on that I thought we did a great job of really taking care of business at the draw we was one of the things that we were worried about and other than that I thought we played you know pretty decent D to hold a good team who's been averaging you know 12 13 goals a game to 7 is that's that's a good job by our defense so all in all I thought it was it was a pretty good game I think we're just really starting to get there of what are what we're trying to do with some of the top teams in the Mac. Yeah talking about defense we could talk about Jamie Bitner and Sarah already but Gabby DeGello she was named the Mac defensive player of the week this week kind of having a breakthrough year back there on defense she sure is and you know I we I talked to her just the other day in practice I said Gabby you just to see how far you have come and this is before she got the award this was on Sunday how far she's come in in these past two years and now we're at two and a half years it's just so heartwarming to see and it did not come by accident it came by really hard work out of all the players we have I'm not sure I've ever seen a player get against the wall as much as I've seen Gabby get against the wall in her first two seasons you know her contribution in the clears are enormous now whereas before we had to have sets where we didn't really want to use her we wanted to use some of the better catching and throwing players where she has really come a long way defensively this year is she's not fouling me or as much it was pretty much a guarantee in years past although she's so quick so athletic so physically strong she was fouling one and three times of contacting somebody now she is zeroed it in on how to play defense with her feet and use that strength to keep a girl out without putting her on the free position line coming up with ground balls coming up with stick checks I'm really proud of her yeah turn the page this week big week this start with like homing Wednesday you two are similar in statistic wise your team ranks fifth in the country in free position percentage convert it they rank six yes they also have a player who has over a hundred draw controls this year so one how do you slow her down and then how do you get to the to the 8 meter arc and hold them not yeah I you know I think we're gonna have to have a big goalie day I think we're gonna have to have a goalie in the cage that sees the ball well anticipates well and really starts her motion and finishes her motion well in the cage that can be a difference maker you know like homing averages so many goals a game their attack is extremely threatening they don't stop moving they have a creative left-hander and they've got two girls who will go hard to cage hoping to draw a foul so we have spent the last two practices really talking about the fact that we want to contain them we don't want to go for anything extra on those three girls we just want to contain if we can do that and not put them on the free position line I think that we have a good chance the other thing is that we've had an amazing breakthrough in on attack I think in the last two or three practices so I'm really hoping that try translates from practice into games I think we've got it to a point that everybody understands what they're supposed to be doing everybody knows how to move I would expect to see and I really hope to see that we should be doubling our goal average total in these next few games yeah one of those next few games is on Saturday at Messiah pretty familiar with them sure play them twice a year almost talk about that match up well I think they're gonna bring something that we don't regularly see I think that their pressure between the 30s is something that we're not used to we don't see against many teams so combating in that is is going to be enormous for us and we're really going to utilize Thursday and Friday to make sure that we can that we can do that as far as the D match up as far as the attack match up I think both teams are capable of scoring I think both teams have really good solid defenses if you look at the scores against common opponents they're close I mean they're they're they nearly mimic each other outside of I think Messiah might score a goal or two more than we do but we hold a team two or three fewer goals so that scoring margin is the same in some of our common opponents it's gonna come down to again I hate to say it but it's gonna come down to the hot goalie if we if we have the hot goalie I think we'll be good they have a more inexperienced player in the goal so we're hoping to really release a lot of shots on her you know I think it could go our way if we if we put it all together in this next couple days tomorrow will be a good test well coach we wish you the best lock in both games this week and we'll see you back here next week great thank you for coach Kathy Rayleigh I'm Sam Murray and this has been the Kathy Rayleigh show