The third time proved to be the charm for Army men’s lacrosse.
After losing its first game in the Patriot League tournament as the top-seeded and host team the last two seasons, Army played a nearly perfect second half Friday to knock off Lehigh, 13-6, and advance to its first championship game in three years.
The Black Knights will face second-seeded Loyola Sunday, which beat Colgate, 13-8, in the second semifinal game held at Michie Stadium with the winner gaining the conference’s automatic bid into the NCAA tournament, which begins next week. The championship game, which will air on the CBS Sports Network, will start at noon. Army defeated Loyola 15-9 on April 18.
The Black Knights did not start well. A combination of a harassing Mountain Hawk defense, poor shot selection and some strong play in the net by Lehigh goalie Kasey Heath, who stopped nine of 13 shots in the half, seemed to have Army looking for both answers and, more importantly, goals.
Army trailed 5-4 at the half. But as the Black Knights, now 12-3 and ranked 14th in the nation, have done before this season, the team collectively turned it on in the third quarter. Not only did Army score nine straight goals to take firm control of the contest, but the team simply kept Lehigh’s offense off the field with a stifling defense, excellent play at the faceoff X, Sean Byrne’s usual performance in net and a patient offensive strategy that found holes in a Lehigh defense that just seemed, for good reason, to run out of gas as the game moved on.
“I think in the first half we just came out a little slow but I credit our coaches and our leadership at halftime to fire the guys up and getting them ready to go,” said senior defenseman John Sullivan, who received his award as the league’s defensive player of the game right before the game.
“I credit Lehigh, they brought a great game. But our enthusiasm and energy is not new, we bring it every day. That is nothing new, and it starts with the coaches, goes to the leadership and the senior class and we are going to keep that going.”
Senior midfielder Evan Plunkett, the second Black Knight to receive a Patriot League player of the year award as the league’s best offensive player (Byrne was the third for being named the league’s goalie of the year), said that the shot selection in the first half left much to be desired.
“That is a recipe for disaster by taking low angle shots only because you don’t have a lot of net to look at,” Plunkett said. “Coming out in the second half, the offense upgraded to the shots we wanted to take. The defense came out flying in the second half.”
Army coach Joe Alberici agreed about the shot selection, noting that the team was shooting the ball from “outside the hashes” early on and managed to correct that later in the game.
“We were settling for good instead of working for great,” Alberici said. “In the second half, we worked more towards great on the offense end.
“In the second half, we just strangled the game. Our ride was just exceptional. We just had the ball the whole second half which certainly made it easier for us defensively and gave us what we needed on the offensive end to crack them. The amount of possessions were very lopsided and that is the best way to get to a really good goalie.”
Alberici noted that Rob Simone, the junior faceoff specialist who won 14 of 21 faceoffs and scored the goal that put Army up 6-5, is emerging at the right time as a force at the X.
“Rob was fantastic in the middle of the field facing off,” Alberici said. “We didn’t know too much about him from his first two years because we had Will Coletti but he filled in when Will was injured at a very high level. Rob has been at his best when we needed him the most like in the fourth quarter of several games where he started to make big time plays.”
Brayden Fountain, Gunnar Fellows and Cal Lambert each scored two goals for Army.
