The men’s lacrosse team won for the fourth time in five games when the Pioneers defeated rival Air Force, 9-6, on Saturday.
Sophomore Mark Matthews recorded his second consecutive hat-trick while junior Todd Baxter and sophomore Patrick Rogers scored two goals apiece.
Senior Peter Lowell got his second win of the season since replacing sophomore Xander Buteux on March 9. Lowell recorded ten saves and allowed only four goals against the Falcons.
After a shaky 1-3 start of the season, the Pioneers have turned things around to a 5-4 record.
“I’ve told the team that they have handled losses better than wins,” said head coach Bill Tierney. “What I mean by that is every time we’ve lost a game they have really gotten upset. They’ve worked very hard. They’ve become very focused and usually came back for the next game pretty well.”
This resilience was evident in the game against the No.15 ranked Stony Brook on March 20th when the Pioneers grabbed their first road win in Stony Brook, N.Y.
DU took a 13-12 lead when Charley Dickinson scored the game-winner with only 2:37 left on the clock.
“We haven’t been playing to our potential this year,” Dickinson said. “With the big win against Stony Brook, we’re hoping that we can carry that into conference play and just carry all the momentum and make us better.”
In the game against Stony Brook, the Pioneers started out slowly and trailed 6-1 with 13:54 left in the second quarter, but rallied back with four straight goals to put it at 6-5. By the 11:49 mark in the fourth quarter, the Pioneers faced a 12-8 deficit, yet managed to pull out a win.
This was not the case in the loss to No. 9 Notre Dame on March 16.
The Pioneers were overpowered by the Fighting Irish and lost 14-7 in South Bend, Ind. Although the team showed spirit in the first quarter, which ended 3-2, it was downhill thereafter.
The Fighting Irish pounced, racking up a halftime lead of 7-3 and the Pioneers would never come within three goals for the rest of the game.
It was during the Notre Dame game when Lowell replaced then-starting Buteux.
Since then, Lowell has been in net and has won both contests he has started.
Lowell regains his starting job after losing it on February 19.
“Right now it is Pete’s job, we thought the team just needed a jolt after the Notre Dame game and Pete came in,” said Tierney. “He’s a senior and he’s been a starter before and we’re going into our league play and I’m not afraid to use either one of those two, but right now it is Pete’s job and hopefully he can stay consistent.”
According to Tierney, the team is starting to reach that potential consistency it has been lacking all year, but there are still things to fix going into conference play.
“I like it,” said captain Dillon Roy about the change Tierney has brought to the team.
“It’s a lot of different techniques he has used that we haven’t in past years. Mainly it’s an overall good fit, because it works well and it is more of a team based scheme than individual.”
