By Justin Paley
The last time the No. 11 Pride men’s lacrosse team beat Loyola was 1993. The Greyhounds dominated the Pride, winning the last nine match-ups. However, the Pride changed that defeating No. 7 Loyola, 9-8 at James M. Shuart Stadium on Saturday.
About 20 minutes before game time, the skies opened as rain fell onto the turf at the Stadium.
Pride sophomore middie Tim Treubig opened the scoring 44 seconds into the game putting a shot past Loyola goalie Michael Fretwell to give the Pride a 1-0 lead.
Loyola answered back scoring four quick goals to take a 4-1 lead with 12:30 left in the first quarter. The Greyhounds scored quickly by winning face-offs and pushing the ball up field. On the day, Loyola dominated the face-offs winning 17 of 20.
Head Coach John Danowski talked about how the Pride can improve on face-offs. “We’ll just keep working at it. At least we stopped the bleeding early. We stopped them from breaking on us.” Danowski then added jokingly, “We’ll bring in some face-off consultants and try to figure it out.”
Stephen Graham got called for a one minute slashing penalty with 10:06 left in the first quarter. The Pride converted on the extra man opportunity as sophomore middie John Orsen scored right before the man-up expired pulling the Pride within two at 4-2.The Pride fought back over the next few minutes as sophomore middie John Keysor and freshman attack Athan Ianucci scored to make the score 4-4.
While the first quarter was fast paced, both teams slowed down the tempo in the second quarter as Loyola’s Stephen Brundage and Craig Georgalas put goals in the net to take a 6-4 lead going into halftime.Both teams struggled to score coming out of the locker room until Pride freshman long stick middie Julian Watts scored with 6:25 left in the third quarter to pull the Pride back within one at 6-5.
The goal fired up the Pride sideline as it came out to greet Watts, who scored his first career goal. Watts was a three sport athlete at St. Anthony’s High School on Long Island. “He’s just a natural athlete and keeps getting better. When a pole scores a goal, it gives the team a lift,” Danowski said. The rain cleared and the sun was out by that point as it looked like the Pride would shine also.
The Greyhounds Matt Cassalia put a shot past Pride sophomore goalie Matt Southard to put Loyola back up by two, 7-5 with five minutes left in the third.
Then all of a sudden, Pride junior middie Ryan Vilar took over the game scoring three straight unassisted goals from 1:44 left in the third quarter to 10:47 left in the fourth quarter to give the Pride an 8-7 lead. “Ryan is such a good athlete. He’s big and strong, great feet, great hands. We’re not surprised by his success. We’re trying to get him to relax, take a little off his shot and hit the cage. He shoots it so hard, he’s tough to stop,” Danowski said.
Brundage tied the game at eight on an unassisted goal with 8:44 left in the game.
Both teams battled over the next few minutes before Graham got called for his third penalty of the day, a one-minute slashing penalty with 5:24 left in the contest.
The penalty proved costly as Vilar found sophomore middie Ryan Lucas who scored the game winning goal with 4:25 left in the game.The Pride defense came up huge over the last few minutes intercepting Loyola passes and forcing turnovers. Southard also was huge in the cage, making several big saves. He finished with a career high 18 saves in the victory.
“It’s a big win. The game wasn’t well played. There were a lot of turnovers and very sloppy from our perspective but I think the guys showed a tremendous amount of heart and a tremendous amount of character in playing hard all the time and we hope that is a sign of things to come because they played so hard and that’s probably something you can’t teach,” Danowski said.
On Monday night, the Pride got a break from nationally ranked teams as it hosted Binghamton. With snow covering the field, the teams played with the normal white ball which caused some problems While the Pride defeated the Bearcats, 14-9, it was never able to pull away as Binghamton stayed with the Pride the whole game.
Sophomore attack Ryan Miller led the way for the Pride with four goals and 1 assist. Miller got the start in place of sophomore attack Chris Unterstein who broke his nose Saturday night and played sparingly against Binghamton. Danowski felt Miller, who has been the fourth option on attack, did a nice job with his playing time.
Ianucci had a solid game, scoring 3 goals and dishing out 2 assists. Treubig also added 3 goals and now has a team-best 8 goals on the season.
Despite the win, Danowski was not pleased with his team’s effort. “I think every game presents a different challenge and I was disappointed in the way our guys approached the game for 60 minutes,” Danowski said. “You only get 13 games, that’s it and each one of those, I would like to think should seem precious to the guys and I don’t think it was that way tonight.”
The Pride struggled on the face-offs for a third straight game, only winning nine of 27.
After the game, Danowski gave credit to Binghamton. “Maybe it was a bit of fool’s gold early with a 7-2 lead after the first quarter and guys thought it would be easy. You have to give Binghamton a lot of credit. It was their second day on the field, they got no assistant coaches, mostly freshmen and sophomores, and those kids played hard. I thought they outplayed us for three quarters, out hustled us and out scrapped us,” Danowski said.
It was the 25th straight victory for the Pride over an unranked opponent dating back to an 8-7 overtime loss at Delaware in 2000.The Pride has a tough task as No. 1 Johns Hopkins comes into James M. Shuart Stadium for a 1:30 p.m. contest on Saturday. Danowski does not feel the Pride is confident heading into Saturday’s game.
“I think Hopkins is loaded. They are everybody’s favorite to win a championship. I think it’s a game that if we put out the effort we did against Binghamton, it will be a long afternoon. But I think the Binghamton game was a bit of a wakeup call and I’m curious to see how we will respond,” Danowski said.