The William & Mary field hockey team returns home this weekend, hosting Towson in the only match of the week.  The Tribe will take on the Tigers at 7 p.m. at Busch Field, with live stats provided through TribeAthletics.com.

Scouting the Tribe
W&M is 5-4 on the year, and atop the Colonial Athletic Association standings after going 2-0 on the road last weekend.  Redshirt-senior Estelle Hughes (Newcastle, NSW, Australia) continues to lead the league in both goals and points, with career-highs of eight goals and 19 points already just halfway through the season.  Freshman Cara Menges (Richmond, Va.) was named the CAA Rookie of the Week after scoring two goals, including the overtime game-winner against Northeastern, and in goal, her classmate Kimi Jones (Virginia Beach, Va.) improved her record to 3-0 with a shutout win over Hofstra, and a 1.48 GAA and .760 save percentage (19 saves) in 284 minutes.

Scouting the Tigers
Towson is 1-9 on the year, and began conference play 0-2 last week.  Katie McNeel leads the Tigers offense with five goals and an assist for 11 points, while six other players have record a goal and a similar number have at least one assist.  On defense, Mackenzie Peacock has the majority of action in goal with a 3.50 GAA and 42 saves on a .600 save percentage.

The Series
- William & Mary leads the all-time series with Towson 22-3, including wins in the last six in a row.  Last year, the Tribe won 3-1 up at Towson, while the last meeting in Williamsburg was an 8-1 W&M victory in 2016.

Notes
- W&M has been strong on the corner at both ends of the field this season.  On offense, the Tribe has six goals off penalty corners, the second-best conversion percentage (16.67%) in the league by just 28th hundredths of a percent.  On defense, W&M has given up the fewest number of goals (8) and its defensive percentage of 85.71% is third-best overall.

- Head coach Tess Ellis enters the weekend just one win away from 50 in her six seasons as the Tribe's mentor.  Only two other coaches in W&M history have reached 50 wins, Nancy Porter (1974-1981) and Peel Hawthorne '80 (1987-2013)

- W&M's 2-0 start to conference play is just the eighth-such start in school history.  Along with three seasons from 2004-06, 2017 and 2018 are the second back-to-back seasons to start conference play undefeated.

- The Tribe has only been 3-0 in league play three times - 2004, 2005, and last year.

- Hughes ranks 15th in the nation in both goals per game and points per game.

- In the latest NFHCA National Poll, W&M had seven opponents ranked.  That includes No. 3 Connecticut, No. 4 Duke, No. 16 Wake Forest, No. 18 Virginia, No. 20 Delaware, No. 21 Stanford, and No. 22 Old Dominion.

- The first seven of the Tribe's games this season were all won with at least four goals, the longest-such streak in school history.  Before the  6-1 win for No. 2 UCONN, the first six games had all been won with four goals each, which is the longest-ever streak of the same winning totals.

- With games against UCONN and Delaware, this is the first time since 1999 that the Tribe has played each of the previous two NCAA Champions in the same season.

- With the cancellation of the Davidson match, W&M is projected to finish the regular season with the fewest number of games played (16) since the 1989 season, which had 15 games before the South Atlantic Conference tournament.  W&M went 10-5 in those 15 games, and finished 12-6 after reaching the conference championship game.

- Hughes' hat trick against Brown was her first, and her fifth overall multi-goal game.  That's tied for the sixth-most in school history, and just one game behind what former teammates Emma MacLeod '18 and Cammie Lloyd '18 achieved.

- The hat trick also ties Hughes for 15th all-time at W&M in the single-game rankings, with the most goals since MacLeod scored four against Hofstra last fall.

- This year will mark the first time that the Tribe has ever played west of the Mississippi River.  W&M will head to California in October, facing Pacific on Oct. 13 and Stanford on Oct. 15.  The Tribe is 8-6 all-time against teams from California, but all of those games were held either in Williamsburg or another neutral sites.

- Over the summer, Christie van de Kamp (Midlothian, Va.) was named to the Team USA U21 Junior National Team for the second year in a row.

- Both van de Kamp and senior Jenny McCann (Annandale, Va.) will serve as team captains this season.