Women's lacrosse earns Final Four berth

Nicholas Valenzuela Arizona Daily Wildcat UA midfielder Jenny Menditch jumps up for the ball during a face-off against a Claremont player. The women's Lacrosse team's 12-8 win Sunday against Claremont puts it into the Final Four. Arizona heads to San Diego this weekend for the end of the Western Women's Lacrosse League Tournament.

The UA women's lacrosse team is heading back to the Western Women's Lacrosse League semifinals after defeating Claremont 12-8 Sunday at Wildcat Field.

Wildcat senior attacker Andrea Bozzolo scored five goals as UA never trailed in the second round playoff game.

"I just really wanted to put the game in the bag," Bozzolo said.

The senior scored two key goals late in the game, giving Arizona the cushion it needed to survive a second half run by Claremont.

With the Wildcats up 7-3 at halftime, Claremont scored twice in 39 seconds to narrow the gap to only two goals, but two Arizona rushes by senior midfielder Jessica Deal and Bozzolo put UA back up 9-5.

Claremont wouldn't die, though, scoring twice more before UA's Heather Kalmbach scored on a cut-move. Then Bozzolo scored twice, the last goal coming with only 1:15 remaining to put the game on ice.

Still, Bozzolo said the Wildcats were lucky to come out of the game with a win.

"It was frustrating today," Bozzolo said. "Our connection just wasn't there today."

Penalties also hurt Arizona, but junior goaltender Margaret Fifer came up big on several penalty shots, stopping all but two. She had 11 saves in 19 chances on the day.

"All through the day I just tried to step up to the ball," Fifer said.

The penalties were a sore spot for UA head coach Josh Dreiband.

"I think we just pulled it out," he said. "I was not impressed by how we played today. Our defense has got to play better."

Dreiband said the fact it was Arizona's final home game of the season may have had an impact on the team's seniors.

"That's just a matter of the seniors getting a little too excited and getting careless with penalties and the ball," he said.

Last year Arizona advanced to the Final Four only to lose in the semifinals to UC-Davis, 12-4 and then to UC-San Diego, 9-8 in the third place game.

Arizona's opponent in San Diego's semifinals on Saturday at 4 p.m. will again be UC-Davis, the No. 3 seed from the North Division. Also advancing from the North is No. 1 Stanford, which will play the South Division No. 3 seed, UC-Santa Barbara.

"We've never been 100 percent before," Bozzolo said of Arizona going into the Final Four. "We've always been intimidated by our competition in the past. But not this year."