By Mark Walters
You can stop holding your breath. As predicted by this particular columnist, the Hofstra men’s lax team got into the 16-team NCAA Tournament field. It was described as a sigh of relief by senior attackman Tom Dooley, but mind you there is no time to enjoy this.
Head coach Seth Tierney has his team practicing days before anyone even knew if the Pride would play again, an admirable and safe move. When asked about the future after the Villanova loss, he boldly stated that his team would practice the next two days. Turns out they didn’t just practice, but practiced hard. Real hard.
Heading up to Cornell this Saturday though the team should be fresh and ready after a weekend off and upbeat attitudes this week during practice.
“It sucked that we lost,” senior midfielder Michael Colleluori said of the Villanova heartbreaker. “We kinda had everything goin’ for us and we kinda let it slip away from us. But yesterday’s practice and today have been really upbeat.”
The team is beginning to click after stumbling a little, losing to North Carolina, barely getting by Stony Brook, and having its heart ripped out by Villanova four days after doing the ripping. Now is precisely the time for this to happen, days before the national tournament.
Fortunately for the Pride, Cornell has played not one but two teams that Hofstra has faced this season, Princeton and Brown. Hofstra beat them both while Cornell lost to Brown. But put that aside. Trust me, it couldn’t be more pointless. Really it’s just banter for me to throw around in between games.
Coach Tierney pointed something out, and that’s that all of the first round matchups feature two teams that have not faced each other this season.
“Everybody has to start fresh,” he said. “Everybody is scrambling to learn more about their opponent now and getting film and familiarizing themselves with players on their team and tendencies.”
It certainly adds to the excitement that is this ‘March Madness’ just a different month and sport. It’s only 16 teams, but it’s the cream of the crop. Hofstra has a quarterfinal home game on the line, so expect the emotion to be flowing up in Ithaca this Saturday.
“One last shot at it,” Dooley said. “If we don’t win we’re done. We’re asking everyone to rally around the whole team and play hard for each other.”
I’d love to speculate more, like who I think is gonna win (I’m a Hofstra student-athlete for cyrin’ out loud, who do you think I’m goin’ for?) But with collegiate sports it’s too damn hard, especially lacrosse. Momentum changes in the blink of an eye, and truly anything can happen. I’ll tell you that Cornell is a good team, but so is Hofstra, and even with all of Jay Card’s game-winning shots (seven), the close one-goal wins (six), Colleluori’s Steve Nash-like hair and point guard play (21 assists) I don’t think this Pride has played its best yet.
I felt good about last year’s team going into nationals… They got blown out in the first round at Hopkins. That team won the CAA tourney, a great accomplishment over Drexel in overtime, but this team still has something to prove. Something for which to play.
The best is yet to come.