When Washington defeated Lynchburg, 12-9, on Sunday in an NCAA tournament Division III second-round contest, that set up a quarterfinal meeting between the Shoremen (14-3) and Gettysburg (16-2) at Gettysburg on Wednesday at 3 p.m.

Those teams have faced each other twice this season with the Bullets winning in the regular season (17-10 on April 5) and the Centennial Conference championship final (12-7 on May 4).

"Someone said to me today that in the South, you have to win two or three national championships just to get to the national championship game," Washington coach J.B. Clarke joked. "Would I have preferred to play somebody other than Gettysburg? I don't know. It's easy to prepare for them because we know them so well. We have to beat teams of that caliber to get where we want to go anyway. So I think our guys are looking forward to the challenge."

The Shoremen are making their fifth quarterfinal appearance since Clarke became the head coach prior to the 1999 season. Although they have advanced to the semifinals just once, Washington is 2-0 against the Bullets in the postseason.

"They like the challenge," Clarke said of his players. "They know that Gettysburg has gotten the best of them a couple times, and I think they're ready to try and turn the tide a little bit."

Posted by Edward Lee at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Salisbury coach Jim Berkman became the NCAA leader in career wins when the seven-time defending national champion Sea Gulls defeated Ohio Wesleyan, 13-5, on Saturday in a NCAA Tournament Division III first-round contest.

Berkman, who is now 327-35 in 21 years of coaching, passed former Army coach Jack Emmer for the record.

"I think a lot more people were thinking about it than I was," Berkman said with a laugh. "I just feel very fortunate that I've had a lot of good players and a lot of good teams because we've had a lot of talent play here over the years. I feel very fortunate to have coached them and be the guy that's been managing the ship down here."

Salisbury (19-0) will meet Cabrini (17-2) in a quarterfinal on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at Sea Gull Stadium. The Sea Gulls have made it to the quarterfinals in all 19 years of Berkman's tenure there and have failed to advance to the semifinals just six times.

"I think some people take it for granted once in a while, but as coaches, we definitely don't take it for granted," Berkman said of the quarterfinals. "The expectation from the players' perspective is that if they don't make it to the championship game, the season isn't successful. That's from the players, and that's because of the bar that has been set."

Posted by Edward Lee at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

When Pride coach Seth Tierney spoke minutes after his team's 10-4 loss to Johns Hopkins in an NCAA tournament first-round matchup earlier today, his voice was thick with emotion, and at times, he apologized for getting choked up.

Part of that emotion stemmed from watching his team's season come to an end and the eventual farewell to three departing seniors. But a good chunk of Tierney's sentiment had to do with Nick Colleluori.

Colleluori, who would have been a senior this spring, was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and passed away on Nov. 28, 2006. But before his death, Colleluori envisioned the creation of a foundation that would help raise awareness and funds to battle the disease -- a vision that became reality when the HEADstrong Foundation was formed. He even drew the foundation's logo while waiting to undergo a procedure.

"The only hard part is saying goodbye to a couple of seniors that have given everything they had to a program that's been through an awful lot with losing a young man," Tierney said. "It's been tough for them."

The team participated in the inaugural HEADstrong Foundation Nick Colleluori Memorial Classic last October, helping to raise $75,000. Plans are under way for a second lacrosse tournament, and the players wore patches with the No. 27 (Colleluori's jersey number) on their uniforms this spring.

"You wake up, you think of him," said junior attackman Tom Dooley. "... You walk into the locker room, and you see him. I don't think anybody in the past has meant more to this program than he has. He's the heart and soul, and he continues to be the heart and soul of this program. He was looking out for us a lot this year. We got him a [Colonial Athletic Association] conference championship, and every day is for him."

For more information, please visit www.HEADstrongfoundation.org.

Posted by Edward Lee at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

When the Midshipmen (9-5) take the field against fourth-seeded North Carolina (8-5) tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. in a NCAA tournament first-round matchup, it will have been 16 days since Navy lost to Colgate in the Patriot League semifinals on April 25.

So will the Midshipmen be energetic or lethargic? They pick the former.

"The week off helped us," sophomore midfielder Basil Daratsos said. "It almost made us more hungry to play lacrosse because we didn’t think we were going to be here. So it’s a second chance that we never thought we would get. So I don’t think we can take it for granted."

Many Navy players thought they would never get this chance. Daratsos said he was pained when he saw senior attackman Nick Mirabito shed a few tears while embracing his mother after the Colgate setback.

But then Princeton lost to Brown and Army was upset by Pennsylvania last Saturday, and the Midshipmen discovered they were in the NCAA tournament Sunday night. The wait was excruciating, but coach Richie Meade said a valuable lesson was learned.

"When you get something taken away from you, you start to appreciate it even more," Meade said of the automatic bid that comes with winning the Patriot League. Navy had captured the qualifier for the previous four years before Colgate's win this season.

"So for us to have the opportunity to play again and see what level we can play at is obviously very rewarding and appreciated," Meade said.

The Midshipmen have an arduous task in trying to knock out a Tar Heels squad that has beaten Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame and Cornell this season. North Carolina bounced Navy from the first round last spring, winning 12-8.

"We owe them one," senior midfielder Terence Higgins said. "We’re excited. They’re good. They’re always good. … We just have to be sound in what we do. Every team has an agenda, their own M.O., and we just need to worry about what we do. We do everything 100 miles per hour, and we need to enjoy it."

Posted by Edward Lee at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

The Blue Jays have rebounded nicely from a five-game losing skid, ending the season with five consecutive wins to grab the fifth seed in the NCAA Tournament. But the first-round game pits Johns Hopkins (8-5) against Hofstra (9-5), the team that sent the Blue Jays on their tailspin.

"We don't think they can beat us. We know they can," Johns Hopkins coach Dave Pietramala said of the Pride, who prevailed, 8-7, in overtime on March 8. "They've beaten us. So there is a great level of respect we have for them."

Although the Blue Jays have never lost to Hofstra at home in seven meetings and never in the NCAA tournament in three tries, the Pride has won two of the last three matchups. Coach Seth Tierney, the former associate head coach at Johns Hopkins who recruited guys like seniors Paul Rabil, Kevin Huntley and Stephen Peyser, seems to be taking advantage of his inside knowledge.

Hofstra upended Drexel for the Colonial Athletic Association championship and has won four straight courtesy of an opportunistic offense sparked by freshman attackman Jay Card and the improving play of sophomore goalkeeper Danny Orlando.

"They're a very formidable opponent, one that -- quite honestly -- got the better of us," Pietramala said. "They played harder than we did, they played smarter than we did. So when that happens, you have to respect them."

While many players might have preferred tangling with a team they hadn't seen this season, Pietramala said the team can't be concerned with that.

"You can't pick or choose," he said. "We all want to say that this team deserves this and that team deserves that, but the bottom line is it's the NCAA tournament. There are 16 teams selected, and we're one of those 16 teams. We have to go play whoever they put us up against."

Posted by Edward Lee at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

One of the first objections observers have had about the 16-team field in the NCAA Tournament is the presence of Denver, which finished third in the Great Western Lacrosse League behind Notre Dame and Ohio State.

Maryland coach Dave Cottle, whose seventh-seeded Terps play host to the 10th-seeded Pioneers on Saturday at noon, isn't one of those critics.

"I give them credit; they played a tough schedule," Cottle said, noting that Denver added North Carolina, Cornell, UMBC and Colgate to its non-conference schedule. "We've got our hands full."

The Pioneers went 2-5 against teams that made the tournament, but they did defeat Notre Dame and Colgate. Cottle pointed out that Denver's 10-6 record could be better had the team not scheduled back-to-back road games against UMBC and Towson on March 1 and 2.

"That's a little hard to do," Cottle said. "So playing one game, I think that will help them a little bit."  

Cottle said he was impressed with the Pioneers' offense, but would need more time to draft a game plan against Denver.

"I have to study them a little better to see what we're going to do," he said. "We'll do our best to try and figure out who they are in a short period of time and try to come up with a game plan that will give us a chance to win."

Posted by Edward Lee at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Like UMBC coach Don Zimmerman, Loyola coach Charley Toomey has every right to be livid about getting matched up against top-seeded Duke when Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champion Canisius has a weaker RPI and strength of schedule than the Eastern College Athletic Conference champion Greyhounds.

And like Zimmerman, Toomey isn't complaining about traveling to Durham, N.C., to tangle with the Blue Devils on Saturday at 2:30 p.m.

"We knew going into the tournament, we were going to see a terrific team," Toomey said after the brackets were released Sunday night. "Whether it was Syracuse, Virginia or Duke, that first-round game was going to be a difficult one. First and foremost, we're excited to be back in the tournament."

Loyola was the victim of the NCAA's archaic travel policy, which limits just two teams to flights for trips of more than 350 miles. With Denver flying to Maryland and Colgate flying to Notre Dame, the Greyhounds and Canisius had to drive to the site of their first-round opponent. So the Griffins remained in New York, taking on Syracuse, while Loyola got the unenviable task of meeting Duke.

Toomey, however, was philosophical about the shuffling.

"Being in Baltimore is great for recruiting, but it's also 350 miles from just about anywhere on the Eastern seaboard," he said. "... But you pick your poison. We're excited to be headed down there, and we're going to go after it and have a lot of fun this week knowing that we're back in the tournament."

Saturday's contest is a rematch of Duke's 21-8 throttling of the Greyhounds on March 8. Toomey said the team has already reviewed the game film.

"We're still going to stress a lot of the things we stressed in that game -- defending one possession, being smart with the ball, not putting the ball on the ground and allowing Duke to run," he said. "That was our goal the first time around, but we didn't achieve our goal. We kind of have to redefine what we're trying to do and make sure we execute a little better than we had." 

Posted by Edward Lee at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)