Army getting some love, but getting ready for Cornell
Army’s first-round upset of 11-time reigning national champion Syracuse is still having reverberations around West Point.
During a conference call earlier Wednesday with Black Knights coach Joe Alberici and junior attackman Jeremy Boltus, junior defenseman Bill Henderson, sophomore midfielder Devin Lynch and junior goalkeeper Tom Palesky, the players explained that their cell phones and Facebook accounts were flooded with congratulatory messages after knocking off the No. 2 seed Orange, 9-8, in double overtime.
Alberici has had a few days to digest the importance of the victory to his program.
"It was a great win based on the amount of e-mail traffic and all of that and the significance to the whole Army family," he said. "You wear that jersey and carry around that flag, a lot of people relate to you. I think that’s pretty significant, but what I’ve encouraged our players and what I’ve done myself is we’ll put perspective on it and all of those things come June and July. We had Monday and the guys enjoyed that victory, and we came back Tuesday a very focused group on Cornell."
Army (11-5) meets No. 7 seed Cornell (11-5) in a quarterfinal on Sunday at 12 p.m. at Stony Brook’s Kenneth P. LaVelle Stadium. It’s another re-match for the Black Knights, who dropped regular-season decisions to both Syracuse (12-7 on Feb. 28) and the Big Red (12-11 in overtime on march 6).
"I think it’s a bit of a positive for us given the week," Alberici said. "We’ve got graduation this week, a few guys are in summer school, a few guys start their duties. So there’s a little difference there. It helps that we’re not starting from ground zero against Cornell. We have a little bit of knowledge about them, having played them. But they’ve changed significantly. They’ve got a lot of people in different positions, a lot of new guys playing. Their changes and who they are, are more significant than Syracuse’s were. Syracuse was pretty much the same lineup and doing a lot of the same things. With Cornell, obviously their core is still the same, but there’s a lot of quality players filling different roles for them right now."
If Army can get past the Big Red, the program’s first Final Four appearance awaits with either No. 3 seed Maryland or Notre Dame in the national semifinal. But Alberici said the team has avoided trying to look into the future.
"We looked at this at the beginning of the tournament as two two-game tournaments, and we’re standing by that," he said. "We were fortunate to get by the first round and really it’s about Cornell. There hasn’t been any talk in our locker room about anything beyond that. It’s about getting Cornell, and then that starts another two-game tournament on another weekend if we’re fortunate to do it."
