Update: The lacrosse team defeated Cincinnati 19-9 and Louisville 14-12 last week in its final home games of the season, to improve to 8-6.  M.E. Lapham led the Huskies, scoring five goals in each game.

As the lacrosse team heads into the final stretch of Big East competition, first-year head coach Katie Woods is looking for the Huskies to finish the year as well as they began.

The Huskies opened the 2011 season with a 5-1 record before hitting some bumps and flipping their record to stand 6-6. They head into a two game final home stand this week against Cincinnati at 4 p.m. today and Louisville at noon on Saturday They will complete the regular season on the road against Villanova and Loyola of Maryland.

“We started off the season pretty strong,” says Woods, a native of South Windsor, who previously was head coach at American University in Washington, D.C., and an assistant at Brown, Cornell, and Davidson. “The team has bought into our philosophy and our systems, but at the same time there’s been a lot of inconsistencies in our play. That’s our biggest obstacle right now. We get into close games and then all of a sudden it becomes inconsistent. It happened in our Georgetown game and our Rutgers game, which for us would have been program changing wins.”

The Huskies are a young team of primarily underclassmen, led in scoring by junior M.E. Lapham (40 goals), freshmen Lauren Kahn (31), Kiersten Tupper (11), and Kacey Pippitt (11), and redshirt senior Lauren Sparks (10).

“We need people on our attacking end where every single person is a threat,” Woods says. “We’ve started to rely on certain people, and other teams are going to scout us and try to shut them down. We need other players ready to step up and be ready to be threats.”

At the same time, she says, the Huskies are working to improve their transition game. Too often in closely contested games sophomore goalie Brittney Testa (11.89 goals against, 91 saves) stops the initial shot, but the ball is lost in the transition from defense to offense.

“We have a crucial error in our transition and then we give [the opponent] another opportunity,” says Woods. “If you keep doing that, they’ll put the ball away. Those turnovers end up being crucial. It’s more time we’re playing defense. That’s something we need to hone in on.”

She says the Huskies have made improvements in several aspects of their team play over the course of the season, and gained more experience in each game: “I feel the team has done some really good things this year to make significant strides. We have to continue to build every year.”

Lapham, an attacker, is emerging as one of the team’s leaders, leading by example as she moves aggressively to the ball. “She’s taken on a new gritty attitude that has been really strong in games.” Woods says. “She’s one of those kids who will do whatever she needs to do to bring the team success. M.E. is going to be the one to step up, fighting and diving for the draw controls for us. I think the other players can learn from that.”

She adds that Kahn, a midfielder, is also showing promise as a team leader: “Lauren’s putting up some really good numbers. She has a lot to learn in terms of the leadership piece but if she gets it, she can take over the game and bring her teammates along with her.”

Woods, an All-American during her playing days at Drew University, says the future for the Huskies will continue to be bright, based on the coaching staff’s recruiting classes.

“We have a strong group of 2011s signed and ready to come in the fall,” she says. “And we’re well into the 2012 recruiting, which is also exciting for us as far as bringing in athletes that want to take this program to a Big East championship. It’s pretty neat being here. You’ve got the strong academic and athletic programs to sell. We need to be competing for the best Connecticut players. I think we’ve done that in both our ’11 and ’12 classes. We’ve got some really strong athletes coming into our ’11 class who are workhorses. We have a couple potentially lined up in the ’12 class who would be great additions.”

The Huskies home games are played at the George J. Sherman Family Sports Complex, located off Hillside Road behind Gampel Pavilion and the Greer Field House.