Narrow scorelines have treated the No. 20 Boston University men’s lacrosse team well in 2016, but Saturday’s version of a nail-biter at Nickerson Field was far from kind.
With inopportune turnovers, a lack of execution and an opponent desperate for a win, the Terriers (8-3, 3-2 Patriot League) were defeated 8-7 by Lehigh University. The Mountain Hawks (6-4, 4-2 Patriot League) saw out a game-winner from senior Chris Appell with 2:28 left to secure the victory.
While BU owned the ground ball battle (30-26), clearing game (15 of 16) and faceoff X (14-19), it was left ruing a contest that saw it fall to fifth in the conference standings.
“We weren’t great execution-wise today, and a lot of credit’s got to go to Lehigh and certainly their game plan and what they did to take away our strengths,” BU head coach Ryan Polley said. “But we had some looks out there and either didn’t make a shot or didn’t throw it to the right person, and we need a little bit more out of some of our best players in these big-time games.”
As Polley referenced, the Terriers struggled to get their usual suspects involved across all four quarters. The attack trio of freshman James Burr, sophomore Jack Wilson and junior Adam Schaal could only muster a combined goal and assist, while sophomore attack Ryan Hilburn and freshman midfielder Michael Laviano’s two goals apiece were the only true sources of inspiration.
Meanwhile, Lehigh’s walk-on goalkeeper, Chris Kiernan, was stellar in finishing with nine saves and keeping the midfield duo of freshman Brendan Homire and junior Cal Dearth goalless. The star of the day, however, was Lehigh attack Reid Weber, as he finished with a hat trick and solved the puzzle that is junior goalkeeper Christian Carson-Banister.
Even though Weber orchestrated Lehigh’s 5-2 halftime lead and comeback in the fourth quarter, he had nothing but respect for the Terriers’ body of work.
“The place they’re at in only three years of being a Division I program is pretty impressive,” Weber said. “We know whenever we come up here it’s going to be a fight. They’re an extremely tough, scrappy team, and we were ready for it. They fought hard, and we were lucky to get a W.”
Despite trailing by three at the half, the Terriers found their way back into the contest through a prolific third quarter. Freshman long stick midfielder Drew Lukacs scored 16 seconds into the half, Laviano ripped two shots under the crossbar and Hilburn converted a man-up chance to give BU a 6-5 advantage.
However, Weber scored another timely goal with six seconds left in the third to set up a 6-6 tie going into the fourth quarter. With momentum in hand, the deadlock was eventually decided by Appell’s finish, which Polley said took the wind out of his team’s sails.
After losing their second game of the year at home, there was an aura of disappointment about the Terriers, but not for Lehigh. Kevin Cassese, Lehigh’s head coach, had the utmost respect for the challenges presented by BU and was proud of the effort his team put fourth.
“I think it’s been a tough go the last few games because we haven’t really been whole and we really didn’t get to practice whole this week either,” Cassese said. “We put it all together today, and it wasn’t pretty by any stretch. In fact, it was ridiculously ugly. And for us at Lehigh, that’s the way we have to win. We’re just fine with that.”
Looking down the road, BU will be careful not to surrender points with only three contests remaining and its goal of making the Patriot League Tournament at the forefront. No. 15 United States Military Academy will visit Nickerson Field Saturday, and Polley recognized that his players will need to improve across the board.
“We’ve got to have a great week of practice, work hard and fix hard what we were deficient at,” Polley said. “Army is great facing off, so I don’t know if we’ll have the luxury of having the ball as much as we had the ball today … We’ll work on our half-field offense and defense and try and get better there, because Army is certainly not going to give us much transition.”
Jonathan's a New Englander who writes about sports, features and politics. He currently covers men's hockey at BU, worked as Sports Editor during the spring 2016 semester and is on the FreeP's Board of Directors. Toss him a follow on Twitter at @jonathansigal.
