Goucher's six-game winning streak ties school record
Goucher coach Kyle Hannan said he had no idea that his team had tied a school record with six consecutive wins until a reporter called him to comment on the streak.
Really?
"To be honest, until I got your message, I didn’t realize we had won six in a row," Hannan said. "That’s how wrapped up you get. But it is neat to do that."
The Gophers’ 17-6 rout of Moravian on Saturday capped six straight victories, which is the third time in the school’s 19-year history that the team has reeled off six consecutive triumphs.
"It’s always tough to win college lacrosse games," Hannan said. "But it’s not a surprise in the aspect that our guys are working really hard, and they’re taking pride at getting better. When your team’s doing that and buying into what’s going on, you’re in a position to win. We’ve beaten some pretty good teams, and we’ve had some pretty good performances."
Hannan said the team has been strengthened by its balance. The top three scorers – attackmen Kyle Boncaro (29 goals and 26 assists) and Rory Averett (41, 6) and midfielder Matt Lynch (30, 17) – are sophomores, while the defense is anchored by senior Ben Veldman and junior Justin Dunn and senior goalkeeper Chris Stricklin.
"I think we’re really balanced now between our younger guys – who were very young early in the season and are now contributing – and our older guys," Hannan said. "Now we’re so balanced that it’s really tough for a team to scout Goucher and say, ‘We’re going to pick on this guy.’ Or, ‘Their attack has been scoring all of their points, so let’s take them out because their midfielders can’t score.’ But now we’re balanced. We’re getting a lot of midfielders who are contributing, our attack is continuing to score, our defensive midfield is playing well as is our close defense and our goalie. So I think our balance is leading us to all of these victories."
The Gophers (11-3) sit in first place in the Landmark Conference with a 5-0 record and can clinch the top seed in the season-ending conference tournament for the second straight year by beating Drew (8-5 overall and 4-1 conference) on Saturday.
But Hannan said he won’t add any emphasis to the game.
"We have another conference opponent on Saturday, and we’re not reading any more into it than that because we want to make sure that we’re at our best and that we’re not putting added pressure on ourselves, to say that we’re in a must-win situation," he said. "Because we have won a lot of games and we’re 5-0 in the Landmark now, we’ve put ourselves in a position where we don’t feel it’s an all-or-nothing game. So we’re just going to go out there and play and hopefully, play the way we’ve been playing the last few weeks."
