St. John’s lacrosse head coach Jason Miller was disappointed after his team’s 14-10 loss to Rutgers in the annual Lacrosse Day of Champions at Manhasset High School on Saturday.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity,” Miller said. “We feel like we missed one today, to be able to play in this environment, for this charity, with this type of day and crowd, we feel like we let this one slip away.”
The Lacrosse Day of Champions is a tournament sponsored by both the Indians Rock Community Foundation, a Manhasset, L.I. charity committed to improving the quality of life for people affected by cystic fibrosis, and the Boomer Esiason Foundation.
Senior Drew Schanen led the way for the Red Storm, finishing the game with five goals while rookie Harry Kutner added two goals. Jamal Jones, Trevor Michaelsen and Dominick DeNapoli also added goals of their own.
Early in the first quarter, the Red Storm jumped out to a 3-0 lead with goals from Kutner, Schanen, and DeNapoli in a span of 13 seconds.
Kutner struck first at the 11:08 mark, when he cut around the crease and performed a beautiful spin move, leaving his defender on the ground to find a one-on-one with the goalie.
Six seconds later Schanen found the net off a beautiful feed from senior captain DeNapoli.
DeNapoli, who is known for his defensive skills, won the next face-off and used his speed to score a goal at the 10:55 mark.
After a Rutgers goal, Schanen fired a hard shot at the top-right corner to make the score 4-1 off a feed from junior Garrett Mitchell.
The next two quarters would belong to Rutgers as they blew by a lethargic Red Storm team, outscoring them 8-4 and holding them to only three shots in the third quarter.
“I just felt like we got out of our game plan,” Schanen said. “We were running around, not sticking to what we do.”
The Rutgers lead would grow to as many as four goals after a Michael Diehl goal with 11:18 left in the third made the score 11-7.
The closest the Red Storm would come was a two-goal deficit after Schanen scored his 18th goal of the year to open the fourth quarter.
The Red Storm showed spurts of energy in the fourth quarter. It seemed as if the Red Storm were poised to make a comeback, but turnovers resulted in Rutgers goals and it was too little, too late.
“We did a lousy job defensively,” Miller said. “We probably jumped on the face-off six times today, I’m not sure we got the game going that we got accustomed to going.”
Junior goalie Gavin Buckley finished the game with seven saves.
The Red Storm will travel to Amherst, Mass. for a tough ECAC matchup against UMass.
Despite the difficult schedule for the remainder of the season, DeNapoli’s outlook remained bright.
“Game plan is the same as every week, get back to the fundamentals and practice hard every day,” he said.
