The William & Mary field hockey team begins Colonial Athletic Association play this weekend, hosting a pair of matches at Busch Field.  The Tribe takes on the Tigers of Towson on Friday night at 7 p.m., before hosting No. 10 Delaware on Sunday at 1 p.m.

Scouting the Tribe
W&M is 3-5 on the year after a narrow 3-2 loss to Liberty last weekend, but has won two of its last three.  Junior Cammie Lloyd (Midlothian, Va.) scored her team-leading sixth goal of the year against the Flames, while Booter Ellis (Delmar, Del.) and Erin Menges (Richmond, Va.) are tied for the confernce lead with two defensive saves each.  In goal, freshman Morgan Connor (Bedford, N.Y.) is fourth in the league table with 5.62 saves per game and fifth with a 2.61 GAA.

Scouting the Tigers
Towson comes into the weekend at 2-7 overall.  Lexi Butler leads the way with three goals and an assist, while three others have also scored goals and two more have assists.  In goal, Emilee Woodall has 101 saves on an .815 percentage, and a 2.85 GAA.

Scouting the Blue Hens
Delaware rose to No. 10 in the national polls this week after a pair of wins, raising its record to 8-2 overall.  Greta Nauck has a team-leading 14 goals already this season, while Lisa Giezeman has four more goals and five assists.  In goal, Emmeline Oltmans has a 2.10 GAA to go with 39 saves.

The Series
- W&M is 20-3 all-time against Towson, and has won four in a row in the series.
- Delaware leads the series with W&M 13-8, and the Tribe is looking for its first win since a 4-0 home victory in 2012.

News and Notes
- 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 won the CAA Rookie of the Week award twice in a row, thanks to Connor and classmate Annie Snead (Midlothian, Va.) who was honored after a week with both a goal and an assist.

- Juniors Ellis and Menges both have a pair of defensive saves on the season so far, tied for 14th-most in the NCAA.  Those are the highest totals in the CAA this year, and as a team, W&M ranks seventh in the country.

- Estelle Hughes (Newcastle, NSW) scored her first career goal against Old Dominion on Sunday.

- Also scoring for the first time were sophomores Jenny McCann (Annandale, Va.) and Alayna Tomlinson (San Diego, Calif.), who each had goals against Georgetown.

- 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).

- In addition to Ellis, both Menges and Lloyd earned honorable mention spots on the CAA pre-season team.

- The Tribe returns 10 of its 11 defensive saves from a year ago, far and away the most in the Colonial Athletic Association.  In addition to Ellis' five field stops, fifth-year senior Maddy Moore (Norfolk, Va.) had three and Menges and Caroline Arrowood (Chesapeake, Va.) had one each.

- Both Moore and Pastor were elected captains for this season.

- 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.