US Lacrosse Magazine released the Nike/US Lacrosse Division I Women’s Preseason Top 20 on Dec. 17. Team-by-team previews will be unveiled on uslaxmagazine.com through the end of the month and will also appear as part of the magazine’s NCAA preview edition in February.

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No. 19 Georgetown

2019 Record: 12-9 (3-2, Big East)
Coach: Ricky Fried (16th season)
Assistants: Kelyn Freedman, Katrina Geiger

All-Time Record: 340--256-3
NCAA Appearances: 16
Final Fours: 3
Championships: 0

2020 Schedule

Save the Date
April 4

The Hoyas won only once last year when trailing at halftime, and it came when they rallied from an 8-4 deficit for a 9-8 double-overtime win over Denver in the Big East championship game. The two preeminent Big East teams split last year and will again vie for conference supremacy.

Georgetown Goes Globetrotting

Ricky Fried took Georgetown on an international trip for the first time last summer. The Hoyas toured Holland and South Africa for 11 days to kick off an eventful offseason.

“Most of it is team bonding,” Fried said. “It helps to play lacrosse, obviously. It’s an opportunity for the team to be around each other and be relaxed and have fun and get to know each other in a different environment because it’s not at school, and you’re just having fun with each other. It was a great trip for us.”

The trip was a grand send-off for some of the big-name stars who graduated. Gone from the first Hoyas team to reach the second round of the NCAA tournament since 2014 are second-team All-American Francesca Whitehurst, who led the team in points, assists and draw controls, along with the team’s second- and third-leading scorers, Taylor Gebhardt and Morgan Ryan, as well as starting goalie Haelle Chomo. Paid assistant coaches Nick Williams and Danielle Etrasco also left. That set the stage for reloading.

“For the players, you get a fresh start,” said Fried, who was named the Diane Geppi-Aikens Memorial Award winner in November. “The fall was a matter of figuring out, who are we going to be? We’re not going to be who we were. The names that left were big names that played for multiple years and impacted us, so who is going to step up and what is this team going to look like and how is it going to be defined?”

The Hoyas don’t have any players of Whitehurst's caliber returning. Michaela Bruno, their top attacker, did not play lacrosse in the fall because of field hockey, but Ali Diamond emerged on the offensive end for what will be a balanced attack that must be efficient. The defense is experienced but will have an unproven goalie. The midfield has several options.

“Athletically, we’re strong,” Fried said. “We’re going to be able to push the ball on the offensive end more. I think we’re a little deeper so we’ll be back to riding a little harder and putting more pressure on in the midfield, which has kind of been a staple of ours.

“Defensively, we’re going to be really smart. We have a lot of returning players. We’re going to be a little more multi-dimensional, in the sense of not just playing one zone that we did last year, which was really successful for us, but hard when things aren’t going great to get out of it.”

Finding the Hoyas’ identity is a work in progress that Fried expects will continue into the spring as they gear up for another NCAA berth.

Projected Starters

A – Ali Diamond – So. – 10 G, 9 A
A –Michaela Bruno – Sr. – 47 P, 15 GB
A – Emily Ehle – Sr. – 16 G, 23 A
A – Cameron McGee – Jr. – 1 P, 1 CT
M – Natalia Lynch – Sr. – 56 DC, 27 CT
M – Mary Pagano – Jr. – 14 P, 11 DC
M – Liza Liotta – Sr. – 20 P, 19 GB
D – Mollie Miller – Jr. – 24 GB, 13 CT
D – Noelle Peragine – Sr. – 25 GB, 22 CT
D – Katie Hudson – Sr. – 47 GB, 23 CT
D – Wynne Whitley – Jr. – 6 GB, 5 CT
G – Micheline DiNardo - Sr. – 8.44 GAA, 36.7 SV%

Tewaaraton Watch
Michaela Bruno, A, Sr.

A second-team All-Big East field hockey player in the fall, Bruno will have the chance to show her athleticism and ability after the graduations of the Hoyas’ top three point-scorers. She’s an accurate shooter who will be a leader for a young offense with attackers looking to carve out larger roles.

X Factor
Natalia Lynch, M, Sr.

A broken wrist cost Lynch four games and forced her to a defensive role at the end of last spring, but she still led Georgetown in caused turnovers. She tops all returning Hoyas in draw controls and is second in ground balls and third in points. She returns healthy to guide the midfield.

National Rankings

9-3

Georgetown won nine of 12 games in which it won more draws than its opponent last spring. Georgetown won 51 percent of all draw controls. The Hoyas must replace the 43 percent of their draw controls lost to graduation by Francesca Whitehurst and Morgan Ryan.

Enemy Lines

“They’ll be good ... They got themselves into a situation where the only way into the tournament was to win their conference, and they did. And then they did some damage in the NCAAs and won their first-round game. They really had a great season with a great coach like Ricky to finally come back after a couple tough years.”