FARMVILLE, Va. – Edel Nyland drove home the game-winner in the second half to lift Longwood to a 3-1 win over MAC foe Ball State Friday evening at the Longwood Athletics Complex.
 
Nyland's go-ahead goal came in quick response to Ball State's Bethany Han, who tied the game at 1-1 with an unassisted score from the top of the box in the 37th minute. Nyland reclaimed the lead for Longwood (4-5, 2-2 MAC) six minutes later with her fourth goal of the season, and Hollie MacDonald followed with another score to put the game away.
 
"I think we've had a lot of games where we've been unlucky and haven't won, a lot of games where we've played well and lost, but today we had a combination of both," said Nyland, who has scored in three of her past four games. "We played well, got lucky at the right times and scored goals. It's a lovely scoreboard seeing all those shots and goals and a win."
 
Longwood used a high-volume approach to outshoot Ball State(1-10, 0-1 MAC) 22-11, putting a season-high 15 of those shots on goal. Ball State goalkeeper Jordan Dues made 12 saves but could not hold back a Lancer attack that sparked when freshman Becky Danaher scored her first career goal in the 27th minute, propelling Longwood to a 1-0 halftime lead.
 
That lead became short-lived after Han weaved her way into the arc and drilled the equalizer past Longwood keeper Lauren Bernard at the 36:34 mark, but Nyland responded minutes later with the eventual game-winner. Nyland, in her own words "lucky," found herself in the right place at the right time when her first attempt on the Ball State net hit Dues' shin guards and bounced right back to her. She reset and skipped her follow-up shot to the lower left corner to put Longwood ahead for good.
 
Bernard and the Longwood defense bounced back as well, limiting Ball State to just two shots on goal the rest of the way. The one-goal night extends a solid run for Bernard, who has allowed two or fewer goals in four of her past five games. Her senior teammate MacDonald rewarded her on the other end shortly after Nyland's goal, extending her lead to 3-1 by drilling a waist-high line drive just inside the left post of the Ball State net for her sixth goal of the year.

"It was good to get three scorers on the sheet," said Longwood head coach Iain Byers. "We're disappointed we let one in, but all in all, 2-2 in conference is great. It was definitely a rough start tonight, but we played our way into the game. A couple of key players got us through that early period, and from then on I think we took hold of the game and controlled the tempo as best we could."
 
The victory was Longwood's fourth in the past six games and lifted the Lancers (4-5, 2-2 MAC) to fourth place in the MAC standings. That hot streak comes as Longwood prepares for a stretch of four straight non-conference games, including back-to-back road matchups at No. 5 Duke and No. 3 North Carolina this Sunday and Friday. The Duke matchup tips off at 2 p.m. Sunday.

#GoWood