Georgetown Gets By Stony Brook

Ruthie Braunstein/The Hoya Senior Scott Doyle chases his mark against Stony Brook.

“We did enough to win, but not a whole lot more than that,” Georgetown men’s lacrosse head coach Dave Urick said about the Hoyas’ 11-8 victory over Stony Brook on Saturday.

The No. 8 Hoyas (8-1 overall, 3-1 ECAC), who dominated the first half, gave up four straight goals in the fourth quarter as unranked Stony Brook (3-5, 0-3) threatened to pull off the upset.

“We set a little higher standard for ourselves, and we certainly didn’t play up to that standard today, that’s for sure,” Urick said.

However, the Hoyas’ scoring, which included a hat trick by junior midfielder Steve Dusseau and three other players scoring two goals each, proved to be too much for Stony Brook.

The Hoyas jumped out to a 4-0 lead with goals by senior attack ike Henehan, senior attack Jamie Sharpe, sophomore attack Mike Hammer and Dusseau.

The Seawolves then got their only goal of the half in the second period at the 3:37 mark from junior attack Kevin Pall, who had four goals in the game.

The Hoyas scored twice more before the break, getting points from Dusseau and junior midfielder Mike Kanach to make the score 6-1. The Hoyas took 30 shots in the half, while the Seawolves got off only eight.

Senior midfielder Scott Doyle opened the second half scoring with a goal less than a minute into the period. Stony Brook netted two, and the Hoyas answered with two goals of their own from Doyle and Dusseau. Each squad scored once more before the end of the period to make it 10-4.

The fourth quarter was when things started to go wrong for the Hoyas. Stony Brook took 14 shots in the period and managed to get four balls by Hoya junior goalkeeper Scott Schroeder, closing the gap to 10-8 with a little over two minutes to play. The Seawolves took advantage of every opportunity they could, even throwing the ball the length of the field to get past the Hoya defense and score at one point.

However, Sharpe ended the Stony Brook run by scoring with one minute remaining and guaranteeing the Hoyas’ 11-8 win.

“It was a good enough effort to win, but we’d like to think that we should have and could have played a whole lot better than we did,” Urick said. “You hate to feel bad after a win, but I guess I’d have to say I’m not feeling real good.”

The Hoyas’ defense has been strong throughout the season, but its effort on Saturday didn’t seem to be up to its usual strength.

“We can’t continuously rely on [junior goalie] Scott Schroeder to bail us out. He made some big saves today that kept them off the board, or else it could have been a lot different,” Urick said.

Stony Brook had 28 shots on the game, 19 of them on goal. Schroeder finished the day with 11 saves.

However, it wasn’t just their defensive play that allowed Stony Brook to remain in the game – it was the Hoyas’ overall effort that fell short of its usual strong standard.

“We just have to get a lot better. We’re not playing at the level of lacrosse that we need to [in order] to go where I think we’d like to head,” Urick said. “At times when we needed a face off we couldn’t win one, and we had some penalties that we probably shouldn’t have taken, and we just didn’t have one of our better days.”

The matchup against Stony Brook was the third game the Hoyas played in less than a week, so fatigue was a possible factor, although Urick did not see that as an excuse.

“We played three games in six days, and that might have something to do with it, but we made it our policy a long time ago not to have any excuses, and that’s a convenient excuse,” he said.

The Hoyas will have a week off before facing Hobart on Saturday at 1 p.m., when they will look to extend their 15-game home winning streak which dates back to last season.