By Ryan McCord
Ask Pride men’s lacrosse head coach John Danowski a month ago if his senior-handy team was capable of sweeping three national powerhouse programs within eight days, and his answer might have surprised you. “I wouldn’t believed it,” Danowski said. “I don’t know of a tougher eight-day stretch, and our guys clearly met the challenge each time out.”
With the offense controlling the pace of the game throughout, senior middy Joe Mascaretti worked through an early ankle injury to win 14 of his 17 face-off attempts, jumpstarting the No. 5 Pride to a 9-5 road victory over No. 6 Princeton on Saturday, tallying an impressive four game winning streak in the process. “You have to get possession,” Princeton head coach Bill Tierney told Insidelacrosse.com. “You can’t play defense for as long as we did, especially against a really good team like Hofstra.”
The win sent the Tigers into Spring Break with their tails between the legs and solidified the Pride’s best start (4-1) under Danowski in nearly a decade. The Pride dominated in a handful of the game’s key facets; nearly doubling the Ivy Leaguers in shots (37-19, including 21 of them on net) while rounding up a season-high 33 ground balls.
Princeton was never able to put together any kind of signifi cant scoring run, even with the ineludible home-fi eld energy that historic Class of 1952 Stadium had to offer, trading goals with the Pride throughout much of the first half. “We saw that we could play with them, so we just came out in the second half and controlled the ball offensively and that really helped us out on defense,” Pride senior defensemen Brett Moyer said.
After coming out of the locker room at halftime with a 4-3 edge, the Pride’s offense practiced its own brand of defense, making reservations on the attacking end of the field for the fi rst 6:01 of the third period to ultimately seize any wind the Tigers may have had in their sails.
Seniors John Keysor (2 goals, 1 assist) and Chris Unterstein (1g, 2a) each accounted for a game high three points for the Pride offense. Junior attackman Athan Iannucci added two more goals to bring his team leading point total to 19.
“Princeton’s defense wasn’t sliding well so we took advantage with Keysor and Chris Unterstein controlling a two man game behind the net,” Pride senior defensemen John Orsen said.
Orsen nabbed four ground balls and put the finishing touches on the Pride victory, scoring unassisted for the fi nal team goal with 3:27 left in the game. Pride sophomore middy Kevin Unterstein continued his active play defensively, leading the Pride with six ground balls while Joe Mascaretti complemented his face-off efforts with fi ve ground balls of his own.
“It was a big difference in the game, Joe did his part and our wing guys did a great job,” said Danowski, who directed his team to their second win in a row against Princeton. “We won them [face-offs] in all kinds of different fashions, and it’s frustrating to the other team when they can’t get a hold of the ball.”
Danowski was pleased with the offensive effort, considering patience was hard to come by in the 6-5 win over North Carolina on March 15. The coaching staff looks forward to having a suffi cient amount of time to work on improving a few minor holes in the team’s play before focusing solely on Saturday’s superb opponent, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.
“Our focus is getting better, improving, we want to become better dodgers, work on the two minute offense,” Danowski said. “We also want to work on [awareness] when teams are substituting, those are good times to attack the cage, and the man-down unit can be better.”
Senior John Keysor scored two goals and added an assist in the Pride’s win over the Princeton Tigers.