The William & Mary field hockey team enters the back half of the season this week, playing four games in eight days.  The marathon begins Sunday, with the Tribe heading up to Boston to face CAA-rival Northeastern at 1 p.m., before returning home on Tuesday evening to host No. 10 Virginia at 5 p.m.

Scouting the Tribe
W&M is 4-6 overall and 1-1 in the Colonial Athletic Association so far, after splitting a pair at home last weekend.  The Tribe downed Towson by an 8-1 count, before being edged in overtime by then-No. 10 Delaware, 3-2.  Junior Cammie Lloyd (Midlothian, Va.) earned CAA Player of the Week honors for her three goal, one assist weekend, while freshman Annie Snead (Midlothian, Va.) earned her second Rookie of the Week nod after scoring two goals and an assist.  For the season, Lloyd now has a team-best 20 points, on nine goals and two assists, while on defense, freshman Morgan Connor (Bedford, N.Y.) has a 2.46 GAA and 55 saves on a .679 save percentage.

Scouting the Huskies
Northeastern is 6-6 overall and 0-2 in the CAA, losing in overtime to Drexel and 3-2 against JMU on Friday night.  June Curry-Lindahl is the Huskies' top scorer with 18 points (7g, 4a), and in goal, Becky Garner has seen the vast majority of minutes with a 2.22 GAA and 73 saves against 100 shots faced (.730 save percentage).

Scouting the Cavaliers
Virginia rose to No. 10 in the polls this week at 8-5, 2-2 in the ACC, though a new poll will have come out by the time the teams play each other on Tuesday night.  Tara Vittese and Lucy Hyams are tied for the team lead offensively with 19 points apiece, Vittese getting there with eight goals and three assists while Hyams has opted for a more balanced six goals and seven assists.  On defense, Carrera Lucas has started nine matches with 57 saves and a .760 save percentage, while Rebecca Holden has four starts and 23 saves on a .742 save percentage.  Both goalies carry a 1.99 GAA.

The Series
- W&M is 5-11 in the all-time series with Northeastern, and is looking for its first win in Boston since 2008.  The Huskies have won four in a row, though four of the last five games have all been decided by a single goal.

- The Tribe is 16-28-2 all-time against the Cavaliers, with its most recent home win coming in 2003.

News and Notes
- The Tribe's 8-1 win over Towson saw a number of historically ranked performances.  It was the second-most points ever scored by W&M in a game (22), trailing only the 23 points scored against Lehigh in 1990, and also tied for the second-most assists in a single game (6), behind only nine helpers against Ursinus in 1994.  The eight goals scored by the Tribe were tied for third-most ever, behind nine goals in the 1990 Lehigh game and against Old Dominion in 1974, and the 45 shots taken were sixth-most ever, and the most since 1992.

- Junior Estelle Hughes (Newcastle, NSW) scored the first goal against Towson just 23 seconds into the contest.  That's the second-fastest goal in school history, trailing only the 21-seconds it took for senior captain Maria Jose Pastor (Burke, Va.) to score against against Temple in 2014.

- The shoot-out win over Davidson was notable for a number of reasons.  It was W&M's first shoot-out game of any sort since 2008, and the first win for the Tribe in a shoot-out since 1993.  All-time, the Tribe is now 5-5 in games decided by a shoot-out.

- The win over Richmond was the Tribe's first since the 2007 season.

- Connor was named the CAA Rookie of the Week on Sept. 20, after going 2-0 with a 0.82 GAA and 11 saves on an .846 save percentage.  She also picked up her first shut-out with the win over Richmond.

- The Tribe has won the CAA Rookie of the Week award three of the past four weeks, thanks to Connor and Snead who was also honored on Sept. 13.

- Connor's 11 saves against No. 4 Duke in the season opener, a freshman record for W&M, were the most for any Tribe goalie since the 2014 season opener.

- In addition to the Tribe (who also received votes), 12 of the 18 teams on this year's schedule were either ranked or received votes in the pre-season NFHCA poll.  That includes seven of the national top-20, and three of the top-seven teams (No. 4 Duke, No. 5 Virginia, and No. 7 Wake Forest).

- Head coach Tess Ellis is in her fourth season with the Tribe, and has twice been named the CAA Coach of the Year (in both 2013 and 2014).

- Junior Booter Ellis (Delmar, Del.) was named to the CAA pre-season team, and classmates Lloyd and Erin Menges (Richmond, Va.) each earned honorable mention spots as well.

- This is the first season since 1986 that W&M enters the season with no previous game experience in goal.  That actually bodes pretty well for the Tribe, given that the 1986 season marked the debut for both Carlen Sellers '89 and Sharon Barone '90.  Sellers would set the still-standing career records for save percentage (.896) and goals-against average (0.87), while Barone graduated as--and is still--the all-time leader in saves (768) and saves per game (11.13), in addition to ranking second in percentage (.879) and shut-outs (25.5).

- Back in the spring, W&M had three freshmen named among the nation's top-50 recruits by MaxFieldHockey.com, one of just six schools in the entire country to achieve that feat.  Cassidy Goodwin (Gloucester, Va.), Snead, and Christie van de Kamp (Midlothian, Va.) were the selections, and later in the summer, teamed up under assistant coach Mark Egner at the Young Women's National Championships to roll to an undefeated national title in the U19 division.