By Collin Bolebruch
This one stung like salt in an already disappointing wound.
On Saturday, Plattsburgh Cardinals men’s lacrosse (3-10) lost to the Brockport Golden Eagles (8-3) by a score of 13-1. The last time the Cardinals were held to one point or less was 18 years ago on April 7, 2004 against Potsdam— a year where they finished the season with a 1-10 record.
This loss drops Plattsburgh to a whopping 0-4 record in SUNYAC play, tied for worst in the conference. With just three games left on the schedule, it is all but guaranteed to miss out on the tournament.
Brockport led in almost every statistic across the board. Most impressively, it totaled more points (13) than Plattsburgh had shots on goal(11). With numbers like that, the Cardinals couldn’t logistically come out with a win.
The Golden Eagles led in shots 43-30, ground balls 35-22 and faceoffs 12-6. Plattsburgh had only fewer turnovers 26-29 and more saves 13-10.
Brockport recorded just less than their season average in shots, and the credit goes to Plattsburgh’s clicking defense.
“This is probably the best that we’ve played [on defense]. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t score on our end, so we gave up a lot of transition goals, but overall pretty proud of the performance so far,”head coach Andrew Hauk said.
The lone goal scorer for Plattsburgh was midfielder Owen Lorenzetti, captain Stephen Kane led in shots with 11 and defender Justin Rocovich recorded three caused turnovers. Christian Bassi was in the goal for the entire game, recording 13 saves while allowing another 13.
“I think that we’ve got a great goalie that can eat up a lot of those shots [that Brockport takes], ‘’ Chris Bassi said. He’ll gobble all those shots up for us, so the number of shots isn’t as important to me, but giving the boys a rest on defense, on offense, and managing our possessions is important for us,” Lorenzetti Said.
Brockport’s scoring came from nine different players, led by Rocco Santillo and Owen VanWie with four each. Other leaders included Santillo and Carson Colucci with seven shots, Ethan Stiles with six turnovers and Aidan Fitzgerald with six caused turnovers.
The Golden Eagles opened up scoring immediately, with the first point of the game coming from VanWie just 30 seconds in. Two more quick Brockport goals put the team up 3-0 with 7:53 left in the first quarter.
After that, Plattsburgh’s defense clamped up, not allowing another goal for almost 11 minutes despite six shot attempts by Brockport.
After that drought, the Golden Eagles scored three goals in fewer than five minutes, but not without Plattsburgh’s only goal being scored in the meantime. Another Golden Eagle goal before half brought the score to 8-1.
At the half, Plattsburgh had recorded only 10 shots.
“We stopped moving our feet,” Hauk said. And we worked on it all week and they were sliding extremely hard, and we just stopped. And when you stop your feet, it’s a turnover every single time. Then the other thing too, we hit their goalie a couple times where we just got to get better shot placement. Their goalie is good and we just made him a lot better.”
The second half saw much of the same. Brockport put five more in the net and Plattsburgh went scoreless, but it didn’t give up.
“Both ends of the field have to be working at the same time,”Lorenzetti said . Kane added, “We knew it was going to be a hard-fought battle until the end, we were taking good shots but they just weren’t falling.”
After this game, Plattsburgh gets a week-long break before its matchup against the Geneseo Knights (6-5). The Cardinals have three games left in the season, and they’re all conference games.
“The best finish we can have is just to come together as a team, catching some wins together and just being with each other and having fun the rest of the season,” Kane said.
