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The Pioneer men’s lacrosse team will live to fight another day, following Sunday night’s NCAA tournament selection show.
The Pioneers (8-6) advanced into the postseason as one of the tournament’s at-large bids and will travel this weekend to face the No. 8-seeded North Carolina Tar Heels (11-5) in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. This is the third consecutive season Denver has clinched a postseason berth under head coach Bill Tierney.
Tierney said yesterday the team’s strength of schedule, along with their conference’s Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), helped in qualifying them over other at-large contenders. He said the team expected to get into the tournament because of their strength of schedule and their April 27 victory over then-No. 3 Duke, but didn’t know where they would be placed in the bracket.
“Every year the strength of schedule is a primary factor in determining where teams go [in the bracket],” said Tierney. “Another factor is a win against a top-five team, which we have. They also look at your top-10 games, and for us, you see we played against teams in the top 10 throughout the year, including Loyola twice, Duke, Notre Dame, Cornell and Penn State. With all that on our resume, plus the ECAC’s RPI, it made sense that we’d get in. I thought we deserved to get in, but then again, someone could easily look at all our close losses this season and say ‘this team doesn’t know how to win big games.'”
The Pioneers’ postseason chances took a significant blow last Wednesday, when they were eliminated from the Eastern College Athletic (ECAC) Tournament in a 14-13 overtime loss to the eventual-conference champions, the Loyola Greyhounds, who were awarded the NCAA tournament’s No. 1 overall seed Sunday night.
It was the team’s sixth loss of the season and their fifth to a ranked opponent, including their second loss of the season to Loyola. In addition, it marked the fourth time this season the team lost in overtime and the fifth time they lost by only one goal, falling eight seconds into the overtime period last week and dropping to No. 13 in both national polls.
Junior midfielder Chase Carraro said the team is looking forward and breathing easier now that they’ve been awarded a second life.
“It’s huge, for our season to have gone the way it did, and for us to have a second breath of life is something that we are really looking forward to,” said Carraro. “Now we can focus on this next game, take a deep breath and realize we are still in this thing and that we have as good of a chance as anybody to win.”
Tierney agrees with Carraro that his team must look ahead to this weekend, but added the team came away with two valuable lessons from the Loyola loss.
“I think we learned two things from last week’s loss,” said Tierney. “The first being we can’t allow teams to jump out in front us the way Loyola did to us; the second is that we found out what we can do when our backs are against the wall. We found new confidence in our ability to score in bunches, tying the game up down seven goals with ten or so minutes to play.”
During the winter, the Pioneers scrimmaged the Tar Heels, an experience Tierney believes will help his team prepare for this weekend’s first-round showdown.
“The scrimmage was very basic, but it was good to get the blood going,” said Tierney. “Our team isn’t fazed by situations like this, and I think our schedule throughout the year has prepared us for this next stage. In March, we played Penn State, Notre Dame and Cornell in a span of ten days or so, and all those were tough, hard-fought road contests.”
The No. 5/6-ranked Tar Heels have a loaded roster, including junior attackman Marcus Holman, who has recorded a team-best 66 points on 33 goals and 33 assists this season.
On the offensive end, Holman is joined by a trio of capable freshmen, including attackmen Jimmy Bitter and Joey Sankey and midfielder Chad Tutton. Seniors Thomas Wood and Jack McBride provide the group with experience and depth.
On defense, they are led by redshirt junior goalie Steven Rastivo with a 50.7 save percentage, allowing 9.78 goals per game on the season.
Seniors Mark Staines and Charlie McComas lead the unit in front of Rastivo, while junior Kieran McDonald and sophomore Jordan Smith are the standout long-stick defenders, causing a total of 24 turnovers between them.
Perhaps the most intriguing match-up will come in the face-off circle, where junior Chase Carraro will take on sophomore R.G. Keenen in a battle of two of the nation’s top face-off men.
Carraro currently ranks 4th in the nation, winning 61.9 percent of his face-offs, while Keenan has dominated the circle, posting an impressive 62.4 winning percentage, which ranks him 3rd in the nation.
“They faced off against each other in our scrimmage and it was a great battle,” said Tierney. “They have some phenomenal athletes on the wings, which make their unit very effective. At this time of the season, you know you will be playing the best and we know it’s not going to be easy.”
Carraro was able to overcome Duke’s All-American C.J. Costible in the team’s win back in April, but Tierney doesn’t see any correlation between beating Duke and how that will help his team win against UNC.
“The Duke win came at the right time for us, and they had just beaten UNC five days earlier for the ACC championship, but that doesn’t equate to us winning this weekend,” said Tierney. “We know we can compete against these ACC teams and we are motivated to go out there and prove it.”
Last season, the Pioneers earned the school’s first NCAA tournament victory as they strung together a pair of victories on their way to the program’s first Final Four berth, where they lost to eventual NCAA champion Virginia.
With a veteran and experienced group, getting one more chance could make all the difference for a team that has lost by the narrowest of margins so many times this year. While the team fell short of its regular season goals, its postseason goal of returning to the Final Four and winning a national championship remains intact, according to Tierney
“They know it’s do-or-die at this point in the season, but there is no longer a sense of our backs being against a wall,” said Tierney. “This is a great chance for us to embrace this challenge and move forward into the postseason.”
Stunning home loss
DU couldn’t finish off what would have been one of the most epic comebacks in lacrosse history last Wednesday, losing 14-13 in an overtime thriller to then-No. 3-ranked Loyola in the semifinals of the ECAC championship tournament at Peter Barton Lacrosse Stadium.
The Greyhounds survived a seven-goal comeback by the Pioneers in the fourth quarter, when junior Scott Ratliff, a long-stick midfielder, scored past freshman goalie Ryan LaPlante eight seconds into overtime following the opening face-off.
“We had another unlucky bounce on the face-off and [Ratliff] was able to scoop it up,” said LaPlante after the loss, describing the last play of the game. “He ran right in on us and we didn’t close in on him in time and by the time we did, he had let the shot go.”
The Pioneers were stifled early and often by a Greyhounds (14-1, 6-0) defense that caused 12 turnovers and shutdown the high-octane DU offense for the first three quarters of the contest, allowing only six goals on 24 shots.
It was the first time all season the Pioneers lost when scoring 10 or more goals.
“I told my team, I was very disappointed in them for the first three quarters, but I am very proud of them for that last 12 minutes,” said head coach Bill Tierney after the game. “It was as impressive of a 12 minutes of lacrosse as I’ve ever seen. Most teams could have, and would have, quit. If we get another chance, we will be a tough team to handle come playoff time.”
In the fourth quarter, Denver completed a comeback for the ages as they scored seven goals in the final 12 minutes of the quarter. Junior Eric Law and sophomore Jeremy Noble each finished with a hat trick on the day, while scoring two goals apiece during the 7-0 stretch late in the game.
Senior attackman Alex Demopolous also added two goals as the Pioneers continued to close the gap in the fourth, but the comeback effort would eventually be spoiled in overtime, marking the fourth time this season the team has lost in overtime and the fifth time they’ve lost by a single goal.
“It was fun to be a part of that run; it’s always better when you’re clicking like that on offense,” said Demopoulos. “It’s extremely tough to lose again [in overtime], especially it being the fourth time. It’s another dagger to the heart for us, but I know our guys will stay strong through this, because it’s not the first time for us. We know we could have had a higher seed in the NCAA.”
Loyola jumped out to its biggest lead of the game when junior midfielder Phil Dobson scored past LaPlante with 13:14 left in the fourth to put the Greyhounds up 13-6. It was the biggest deficit the Pioneers faced all season.
“I was just disappointed early on because we didn’t have the fire we had against Duke to start the game,” said Tierney. “They just out-hustled us on a few ground balls.”
Denver made a few comebacks throughout the contest, but trailed for the entire game as the Greyhounds jumped out to an early 4-0 lead in the first quarter and didn’t let up.
“I thought we were capable of doing that the whole game, but for whatever reason we couldn’t get in that type of groove and it came too late,” said Demopolus. “Loyola’s defense did play very well and a lot of credit goes to them.”
If the Pioneers can upset the Tar Heels on Saturday, they will more than likely get a third chance at beating the Greyhounds, who are the tournament’s No. 1 seed, in the national quarterfinals held the following weekend in Annapolis, Md., on May 19.
Loyola drew Canisius (6-7) in its first round match-up, playing one of only two teams in the tournament that finished with a sub-.500 record during the regular season.
