Photo gallery
ERIE, Pa. -- Senior forward Courtney Hoover scored two goals and sophomore forward Ashley Paganie scored one goal and assisted on two others Friday afternoon to lead The Rock to a 4-0 win over 24th-ranked Bloomsburg in opening-round action of the NCAA Division II Atlantic Regional tournament.
The win moved The Rock (14-6-1) into a 2 p.m. Sunday second-round duel with Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference-Western Division rival Mercyhurst on the 17th-ranked Lakers' home turf.
Bloomsburg, which suffered its third straight loss, ended its season with a 13-6-1 record.
Paganie scored what proved to be the game-winning goal just before the 20-minute mark of the opening half when she took a pass from Rock goalie Sarah Lacy and bent a shot past Bloomsburg goalie Frances Nicoletti into the right-hand side of the goal.
That goal, Paganie's ninth of the season to go along with 10 assists, stood as the only point scored in the first half of action.
Sophomore forward Juliana Howell scored the second goal of the game and her fourth of the season on a cross from Paganie in the 60th minute of action.
Hoover (pictured above) then closed out the scoring with tallies in the 76th and 87th minutes. Paganie set up the first goal with a pass that Hoover turned into a shot attempt and then, when the first attempt was deflected by Nicoletti, collected and put into the left side of the net.
Hoover's second goal of the game and fourth of the season was a carbon copy of her first tally of the game as she fired a shot, collected the loose ball after Nicoletti deflected the shot away from the goal mouth and buried it in the left side of the net.
The Rock outshot the Huskies by a 19-18 margin that included an 11-8 advantage in shots on goal. Lacy scored eight saves in addition to her first-ever assist, while Nicoletti had seven saves for Bloomsburg.
Friday's win gave SRU a 3-2 record all-time in NCAA opening-round games and marked the second straight season in which the Green and White chalked up a first-round win. A win Sunday would be SRU's first-ever in second-round action; The Rock is now 3-4 all-time in NCAA playoff games.
Sunday's game will mark the fourth meeting this fall between The Rock and Mercyhurst. The Lakers won the first three by 2-1, 2-1 and 5-2 scores, the latest coming Nov. 4 in quarterfinal action of the PSAC playoffs.
Friday's win was the first recorded by The Rock on Mercyhurst's turf since a 3-2 double-overtime decision vs. the Lakers in 1999.
In the other first-round game of the Atlantic Regional played Friday, fifth-seeded East Stroudsburg blanked fourth-seeded West Virginia Wesleyan, 4-0, to earn a spot opposite top-seeded West Chester in a Sunday regional semifinal game.
