Its official: The lacrosse season is set to begin for real this time.

Saturday concluded the exhibition schedule for the lacrosse team, as the St. John’s team got their final tune-up in a 9-8 loss at Lafayette.

However, despite the snowy weather conditions, it was not the way the Red Storm wanted to end the preseason.

Down 4-0 after one quarter, Head Coach Jason Miller decided to put pressure
on Lafayette’s offense and the Red Storm defense caused turnovers.

To Miller’s credit, his team came back in the second quarter with goals from
sophomore attacker Harry
Kutner, and freshmen midfielder Dillon Ayers and midfielder Brandon Ayers.

Kutner is coming off a productive freshman season where he put up 24 points on 13 goals and a team-high 11 assists last year.

The Garden City, N.Y. native will
be counted in a big way, while being expected to construct similar numbers.

Despite a change in game plan, the defense remained a little shaky, but senior goalie and captain Gavin Buckley made quite a few exceptional saves, showing why he enters the season ranking ninth in team
history on the all-time saves list.

Careless mistakes by the first-year player gave St. John’s easy opportunities to score, with the final being no indication of how the game was played.

The one bright spot on the offensive side of the ball was the play of junior Terrance Leach, who played well and stepped up at the attack with a handful of goals.

The Red Storm will open the regular season at home when they take on Holy Cross on Feb. 20. This year will mark the first season in the Big East lacrosse conference, with Georgetown, Notre Dame, Providence, Rutgers, Syracuse and Villanova will make up the rest of the newly-formed
conference.