Men’s lacrosse suffers setback at Bucknell, winning streak snapped

With a healthy dose of momentum and a three-game winning streak in hand, the No. 16 Boston University men’s lacrosse team fell Saturday afternoon when it visited Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Slated against Bucknell University, the Terriers (6-2, 2-1 Patriot League) were dispatched to the tune of a 13-6 loss, forcing a gut check onto a program that’s been on the rise in its third year of existence. The game mimicked BU’s other defeat this year, a 16-10 loss at the hands of Hartford University, and BU head coach Ryan Polley did not mince words during the setback’s aftermath.

“We’ll just have to dust ourselves off and get back up,” Polley said. “That starts with me, starts with the staff and goes all the way through our upperclassmen and freshmen. It’s a long season and it’s a journey, and you can’t get too high when you’re winning and you can’t get too low when you lose.”

Bucknell (5-3, 2-2 Patriot League) goalkeeper Christian Klipstein made 14 saves on the afternoon, but Polley said time and time again that the execution just wasn’t there. The box score was quite deceiving in this regard too, as the Terriers completed more clears, won more ground balls, won the faceoff battle and had a higher clearing percentage.

Thanks to goals from sophomore attacks Jack Wilson and Ryan Hilburn and freshman attack James Burr, BU actually held a 4-2 lead until 8:56 remained in the second quarter. The affair was also knotted at four at halftime, and the Terriers’ mentality was worlds apart from the ultimate seven-goal loss.

“I think it was a little bit of a bummer going into halftime tied,” Polley said. “I don’t think we were depressed or upset, I just thought we had an opportunity similar to the Colgate [University] game to be up a couple goals going into halftime, and we weren’t.”

Come the second half, Polley had a rather honest and fair assessment, saying the game quickly snowballed away. He said there were poor lacrosse plays aplenty, as BU was outscored 9-2 and outshot 26-14 in the stanza. Attack Will Sands and midfielder Tommy O’Connor, two players BU isolated as threats before all last week, did the most damage, as they combined for six goals and four assists.

While the Terriers took a step backwards Saturday, they’ll look to bounce right back when they travel to No. 14 Harvard University Tuesday night. To do just that, the team had Sunday off while the coaches were hard at work formulating a game plan, and the players will go light in Monday’s practice in preparation for another stern test.

Much like after the Hartford (4-3) loss, Polley hopes his captains will refocus the entire team. Junior class mainstays such as Cal Dearth, faceoff specialist Sam Talkow, goalkeeper Christian Carson-Banister and long stick midfielder Greg Wozniak should also help BU avoid similarly poor fortunes against the Crimson (4-3).

“There’s not really much time to wallow in this loss,” Polley said. “We’ll look for the upperclassmen to correct what we need to correct, and we’ll make sure guys are focused and executing in practice as well.”

As that game plan formulates and the Bucknell loss becomes a relic of the past, Polley said he firmly believes his team will become stronger.

“I think we’ll be okay, to be honest,” Polley said. “It’s nice to have a quick turnaround, Harvard is a great team and it’ll be a great challenge. We’ll focus quickly, correct the mistakes we made on Saturday, get better and play a great game.”