Navy eager to end skid
Three consecutive losses before the first weekend of March might create panic around a lacrosse program. But not Navy.
“You don’t feel great when you’re 1-3,” coach Richie Meade conceded. “You don’t feel great when you feel like you were in the games and then you lost those games. You have the feeling like you’re working real hard and sometimes you can get discouraged because you’re not getting any payback for your hard work. That’s kind of the concept of determination and mental toughness, and teams go through that. We’ve gone through winning seven or eight games in a row. Well, this is the other side of that, and we’ve just got to fight through that as a group. We’ve got very good leadership, and the guys have done a wonderful job in practice. So we’ve got to be more focused on where we’re going than worry too much about what happened yesterday.”
Off to the program’s worst start since 2001, the Midshipmen have fallen to No. 11 Loyola, No. 16 North Carolina and Lehigh in a span of 11 days. In all three contests, Navy owned a lead in the third quarter before eventually running out of gas.
Meade said the source of the team’s problems has been an ineffective faceoff unit that is winning just 33.3 percent (32-of-96) of its draws, which leads to fewer possessions for the offense.
“In the four games, the opposition is getting 60-something more possessions than us,” Meade said. “So that makes it tough. That puts pressure on all the other areas. For instance, in Tuesday night’s game [a 14-10 loss], we took more shots than Lehigh and we had fewer turnovers, but our turnovers were magnified because we weren’t getting the ball back. We scored a couple goals, we didn’t get the ball back, and that gave them the opportunity to score. We’ve got to fix the faceoffs. If we win 50 percent of our faceoffs, we may have won the last three games. And if we’re playing less defense, we’re obviously going to play a little better.”
The Midshipmen get their first crack at changing their fortunes Monday night when they visit No. 20 Bucknell. Navy owns a 7-3 advantage against its Patriot League rival, but the Bison have beaten then-No. 19 Villanova and have won faceoffs at a 61.0 percent clip thus far.
“I certainly don’t look at this and think, ‘Oh God, everything’s bad. What’s going on?’ I think we’re doing a lot of things well,” Meade said. “I think our kids are working really hard. We just need to hang in there right now and hopefully, we can turn the faceoff part around and get better defensively and win a couple of games here.”
