By Justin Paley
Many questions for thePride men’s lacrosse team when it took the field at James M. Shuart Stadium for the season opener against No. 12 Cornell last Saturday.
Could the Pride replace the 64 goals provided by Joe Kostolansky and Jim Femminella last season? Could 30 players with one year or less of division one experience respond? Could the young but talented defense be able to stop the Cornell attack?
The Pride answered these questions playing the Big Red tough, but ultimately lost, 14-12, in front of 1,429 fans.
Cornell scored 49 seconds into the game when Sean Greenhalgh put away a pass from Andrew Collins. Greenhalgh finished the game with four goals while Collins had four assists on the day.
Justin Redd scored unassisted for Cornell with 12:49 left in the first quarter to put his team up, 2-0.
The Pride responded as sophomore attack Ryan Lucas scored off a feed from sophomore midfielder John Orsen with just over seven minutes left in the first quarter.
Rob Bonaguro, a junior midfield transfer from Nassau Community College got called for a cross check, drawing a one minute penalty and Cornell converted on the man-up as Collins found Kevin Nee to put the Big Red up, 3-1.
Both teams traded goals in the final five minutes of the first quarter as Cornell led the Pride, 5-3 at the end of the first.
The Pride dominated the second quarter, outscoring Cornell 5-1. Sophomore midfielder Tim Treubig scored twice during the 5-0 Pride run and finished with a team-high four goals on the afternoon. Freshman attack Athan Iannuci, sophomore midfielder Ryan Vilar, and Lucas would also score during the run. Pride head coach John Danowski was not surprised by Treubig’s effort.
“Tim’s a terrific athlete. When someone scores early like that, you hope they don’t put it to rest after that and I don’t think Tim did. He continued to be aggressive. I think we would have liked to get him a few more shots in the second half. We were happy with his aggressiveness and how hard he played,” he said.
With 2:57 left in the first half, Cornell’s Joe Boulukos scored off an assist from Redd to end the Pride 5-0 run and bring his team within two goals at 8-6 heading into halftime.
Cornell came out fired up from the locker room and outscored the Pride, 7-3 in the third quarter to take control of the game.
During a 5-0 run in the third quarter, Greenhalgh put two in the back of the net while Boulukos scored three.
With Cornell leading, 11-8, with 4:06 left in the third quarter, sophomore midfielder John Keysor ended the Big Red scoring run by putting the ball past Cornell goalie Matt McMonagle to move the Pride within, 11-9.
Cornell answered right back over the next two minutes as Boulukos found the net again, finishing the day with a team-high five goals. Brian Pittard found Brian Clayton with 1:56 left in the third as Cornell extended it lead to 13-9.
Keysor scored two goals in the final 1:15 of the third quarter and the Pride went into the final quarter trailing, 13-11.
Treubig talked about how the Pride was able to adjust after the Cornell run. “We just took a deep breath and said calm down and let’s get one goal at a time. We started to eat up at their lead but they put in a couple more than us and that’s the way it went,” Treubig said.
The fourth quarter was a defensive battle as each team only managed one goal apiece. Freshman midfielder Tom Brewer scored unassisted with 13:33 left in the final quarter to move the Pride within, 13-12. It was the last goal of the game for the Pride as Cornell’s defense held the Pride attack in check the rest of the way.
Andrew Collins put himself on the score sheet after Justin Redd fed him the ball and he put it past sophomore goalie Matt Southard with 8:31 left in the game. Southard finished with 11 saves in net.
The Pride appeared to get a goal with 3:42 left in the game from sophomore attack Chris Unterstein but it was disallowed because of an off sides call.
Keysor feels there were positives from the loss, saying: “We got to build defensively. Our poles played unbelievable. Our middies need to help out but it’s coming together and offensively, its there.”
The Pride lost 20 of 28 face-offs. “It was a weakness we showed in preseason and it showed today,” Danowski said.
The Pride starting attack of Lucas, Iannucci, and Unterstein combined for three goals and five assists. Danowski was pleased with their effort. “We were really concerned about attack coming into the season but they moved the ball well and played very well together and unselfish. In the end, they didn’t make some plays and that’s disappointing. But overall for 60 minutes and for where we’re at, they certainly made a big step forward,” Danowski said.
The Pride welcomes another ranked opponent to James M. Shuart Stadium on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. when Loyola College comes to visit. Loyola, ranked No. 10 in this week’s Insidelacrosse.com media poll, will be looking for its second straight win over a CAA Opponent after defeating Towson, 14-9, in its opener. Junior Matt Monfett transferred from Duke over the summer and scored three goals in the win over Towson. The Pride leads the all-time series, 13-12, but lost last year’s opener, 10-4, to the Greyhounds.
After Loyola, the Pride remain at home on Monday to take on Binghamton at 7:30 pm. Binghamton was picked to finish sixth in the America East preseason poll and the Pride easily handled them last year, winning 15-5.
Treubig knows that the Pride, who fell to No. 14 in the Insidelacrosse.com poll, can easily bounce back. “It’s [Pride] tradition that we start off slow at the beginning and at the end everyone is scared of us,” Treubig said.