The Seawolves dropped a spirited affair on Saturday afternoon to America East Rival UMBC, 14-8. The game followed an earlier contest between Duke and Dartmouth, the other half of the autism for lacrosse doubleheader.
UMBC jumped out to an early 2-0 lead with good ball movement all around. UMBC did a good job the entire game of finding the open man and getting the open shot, something the Seawolves could not do.
Freshman Graham Adams scored his first career goal after putting a nifty move on the UMBC goaltender Jeremy Blevins to get the Seawolves on the board in the first quarter. The Retrievers and Seawolves exchanged goals at the end of the quarter, and again, Adams got the tally from Sophomore Kevin Crowley.
UMBC scored the first goal of the second quarter to pull ahead 5-2, but the Seawolves scored twice late in the quarter to bring the game to 5-4.
Sophomore Jordan McBride scored the Seawolves third goal, and Adams added his third of the game off the third assist of the game by Kevin Crowley. “Kevin was finding me like he did all week (in practice) and I just managed to score,” Adams said.
The early goal was the first of Adams career. Coming off an injury in December, he worked himself into the starting lineup this week. “He had a great week of practice,” Head Coach Sowell said. He previously appeared in 2 games.
“It felt good,” Graham said. “At first I couldn’t get open because they were face guarding me a bit, I guess because they didn’t see me on film at all.”
Just as they did at the end of the first quarter, UMBC was able to score an important goal in the final seconds of the half to push their lead back to two goals.
“The end of the second quarter, that sixth goal hurt us a little bit” Sowell said. “Then we win the face-off but turn it over, which has kind of been our Achilles heel as of late.”
The Retrievers took control in the third quarter off turnovers which were a constant for Stony Brook, and they also took advantage of man up opportunities.
After an early goal in the third quarter, UMBC capitalized on back to back man up opportunities to extend the lead to 9-4. Again, they were able to find the open man in front of the net.
After Stony Brook hit a post, Freshman Jack Hewett was able to get the rebound and find Sophomore Timmy Trenkle who buried the ball into the net with two minutes to go in the quarter. UMBC added another late in the quarter.
One of the few brights spots for the Seawolves was sophomore Adam Rand. After a strong game against Denver, Rand was again masterful on face-offs.
“Adam’s been very good,” said Sowell. “He played a lot last year, and he’s a hard worker. He’s playing at a really high level right now.” He went 9-12 in the first half, and would finish the game 19-26.
After a fast break goal for UMBC and some more good ball movement, sophomore Kevin Crowley scored his first goal in the game off an assist from Tom Compitello. Crowley also later assisted on a Jack Hewitt goal. He finished with 4 assists on the day.
McBride scored the final goal of the day with 15 seconds left, bringing the final margin to 14-8.
“UMBC’s a pretty good team, they’re not ranked 8th in the country for nothing,” Sowell said. “They’re really solid across the board.”
Stony Brook once again encountered problems with turnovers. “If you’re going to beat a team in the top 10, you can’t have more turnovers than they had,” Sowell said. The Seawolves had 22 while the Retrievers only recorded 14. “Its not due to lack of trying, we shoot ourselves in the foot sometimes,” he said. “You just don’t have the margin of error. We’re trying to figure it out.”
The Seawolves will look to get back on the winning track next week at Vermont. The Catamounts are coming off a win against Hartford in another America East match. The game starts at 1:00pm on Saturday.
