BALTIMORE, Md. – Bouncing back is something that every team of national prominence has to do. Following last week’s 11-10 loss to Penn State, the Massachusetts men’s lacrosse team (8-1, 2-1 Eastern College Athletic Conference) was faced with having to bounce back in only its second road contest of the season against yet another underrated conference foe.
And after a first quarter where Maryland-Baltimore County (4-3 1-3 ECAC) held the ball for a large majority of time and held a 3-1 advantage, things looked somewhat bleak for the Minutemen.
“I think we were still playing with last week’s mentality – we were still in last week’s game, we didn’t get out of it yet,” senior midfielder Chris Fiore said. “Once we got a goal on the board it was back to playing lacrosse again.”
And then the floodgates opened. The Minutemen outscored the Retrievers 10-5 the rest of the way en route to an 11-8 victory, including a six-goal run at the beginning of the second quarter to pull away from UMBC to end the first half.
Fiore (three goals, one assist) and Kevin Glenz (two goals, two assists) led the Maroon and White with four points apiece, while Kevin Leveille and Jeff Zywicki tacked on two goals each and an assist of their own. In total, six different Minutemen scored in the contest.
“Anything to bounce back from last week and give the guys a little more confidence,” Fiore said in reference to the importance of the game. “We started a little slow but once we got going it felt like we were getting back on track to our normal selves again so it was nice.”
The Retrievers’ in-tight zone defense took away most of the prime passing lanes for the UMass attack, and quickly collapsed on any Minuteman setting up in the slot. This forced the Maroon and White to change its strategy.
“We’re not typically a patient team, so we just made sure our guys were patient with it,” UMass coach Greg Cannella said. “I told our guys to try to find the seams, move the ball one or two or three times, and we’ll get open shots and fortunately we did.”
“Usually when they are in a zone, they’re trying to force us to shoot from the outside, and we don’t mind shooting from the outside, but you’d like to get it easier,” Fiore said. “But once we started shooting from the outside, and they started falling, it was like, why not shoot from the outside if they’re going to give it to us?”
UMBC dominated the first quarter of action, outshooting the visitors by a 9-2 margin. Only a goal by Fiore with 4:13 to play prevented the Minutemen from finishing up the first with a zero on the scoreboard.
“UMBC came out, they were ready to play – we didn’t win any faceoffs there at the beginning of the game,” Cannella said. “We didn’t have the ball until after the first couple of goals. If you don’t have possession, you can’t score. You can’t ask the defense to continue to shut down people. UMBC took some great shots and they worked their offense. UMBC is a really good team.”
But a six-goal run to start off the second frame staked the Minutemen to a 7-3 lead with 35 ticks left in the half. However, a late goal by Josh Gerber on a fast break trimmed the lead to three and cut off UMass’ momentum going into the locker room.
“We scored six unanswered goals right before that,” Fiore said. “It sucked, 15 seconds left and they scored a goal. It’s not like we let up, they just got a lucky break…I don’t think it really put us down at all, if anything, it just boosted us up because they just got a goal.”
“When we got in the locker room we said that has no bearing on what we did in the second quarter,” Cannella said. “We outscored them 6-1 in the second quarter. That’s just something that happens to us.”
Bill Schell was yet again the backbone of a defense that was still without senior Tom Fallon, who has missed five games with a groin injury. Schell made 15 saves to seal the victory for UMass.
“Billy was excellent,” Cannella said. “Hopefully he’ll continue to improve every day. He was solid specifically in the third and fourth quarters, he was excellent. If your goalie does that and we can shoot the way we shot, you’ll be successful.”
Cannella also felt that the competitive play in UMass’ last two games – Saturday’s win over UMBC and last weekend’s loss to Penn State – were indicative of the power in the ECAC conference this season.
“That’s a very good team that we beat [Saturday] on their home field,” Cannella said. “So [the conference] is very competitive. It’ll continue to be very competitive. Hopefully in the end, that will pay off for the entire league.”
Jim Pignatiello contributed to this story.
