Melissa Samoskevich’s overtime goal with 55 seconds left in the game gave the No. 3 Quinnipiac Bobcats a 2-1 victory against the No. 7 Harvard Crimson, QU’s first win against them in five years.
Harvard (8-4-1, 5-3-1 ECAC) swept the four games in the 2014-15 season, including the 5-0 win against the Bobcats (13-1-3, 7-1-2 ECAC) in their first NCAA tournament appearance in March. The victory is the third in 23 meetings between the conference foes.
“I think for us it’s just being confident and not sitting back,” said Quinnipiac coach Cassie Turner. “I thought we dictated the play a lot more this year than we have in the past. So that was really important for our team to believe that they could make those plays and to believe that we could beat Harvard.”
The Bobcats took the lead at the tail end of the first period with a smooth wrist shot that went in over the shoulder of Harvard’s Emerance Maschmeyer. Quinnipiac held Harvard scoreless until Karly Heffernan beat Sydney Rossman over her shoulder glove side to tie it seven minutes into the third.
“We started to get our legs under us and play a bit better in the third period, and I felt like we owned that period a little bit more; we got a big goal and we were hunting the puck,” said Harvard coach Katey Stone. “We battled back in the third period, played what looked more like Harvard hockey, and unfortunately [we] made a few of the same mistakes we were making throughout the game and it cost us.”
Harvard posted a higher volume of shots in the overtime, outshooting Quinnipiac 3-1 in the five minutes. Rossman worked to smother rebounds and match save for save with Maschmeyer, a two-time Patty Kazmaier Award nominee.
“I think Syd’s emerging as one of the top goalies in our conference; she played a great game today,” said Turner. “She’s a good in terms of understanding those key moments and making those key saves.”
In the waning seconds of extra time, it would be Quinnipiac’s top three goal-scorers that would end the game.
Taylar Cianfarano brought the puck in on the far side boards and fed a pass over to Nicole Kosta in the paint. Kosta kicked the shot across the paint to Samoskevich, who was back on forward after spending a portion of the night on defense.
The team spilled off the bench to celebrate the freshman’s eighth goal of the year.
“‘Samo’ has learned a lot about how we want to attack on our team and she was really patient on the back door,” said Turner. “So it was nice to see things we work on, that they’re able to use their skills to be able to execute within them.”
The loss came in Harvard’s last game for the first half of its 2015-16 schedule. The Crimson are now 1-1-2 after taking off on a seven-game winning streak in November. To Stone, many facets of her team’s game need to improve over the break.
“I think we gotta find our character. We gotta find our grit. We gotta be willing to invest more for each other and see how good we can be in 2016.”
