Pietramala: No Guarantee of a Repeat
by Clare Lochary | Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff
BALTIMORE - Coming off the field at M&T
Bank Stadium, the Hopkins players let out whoops of joy for having
triumphed over instate rival Maryland, 10-9, in one of
lacrosse’s oldest and fiercest rivalries. The Blue Jays are
32-11 in one-goal games under head coach Dave Pietramala, and it
was the third time in a row Hopkins has beaten the Terps, and the
58th time overall in the 105-game rivalry. The win and the ensuing
celebration were much-needed for a team with a 5-4 record.
Even so, head coach Dave Pietramala warned against false
confidence in the face of a narrow win. Last season, the Blue Jays
used a win over Maryland to launch a mid-season renaissance that
took them from a 3-5 start to a berth in the national championship.
But there are no guarantees that the same thing will happen
again.
“We’ve always bragged about our one-goal wins, and how
proud we were of them because they were little detail wins, and we
lost two one-goal games in a row,” said Pietramala, referring
to previous losses to Virginia and North Carolina.
“I’m sick and tired of talking about how this game
unifies us. We have to be careful not to think that because of this
game, it just happens now. I’m happy that we won. But I
don’t want to assume that just because we beat Maryland, that
everything’s OK.”
Hopkins jumped to an early 2-0 lead, but Maryland tied the game
repeatedly and took a brief 8-7 lead in the third quarter on a
Jeremy Sieverts’ bounce shot. The Blue Jays remained poised,
and put together a three-goal run to regain the lead. The late
goals came from Michael Kimmel (2g, 2a), Josh Peck (1g) and Kyle
Wharton (3g, 1a), in a game that produced 10 goals from seven
different scorers.
“We needed to slow the ball down,” said Wharton.
While the attack was eclectic, the defense did a solid job of
holding a potent Maryland offense to single digits. The Terps were
handicapped by the absence of attackman Will Yeatman (sprained
ankle), but Dan Groot (3g) and Grant Catalino (2g, 1a) provided
ample firepower. Gvozden, who struggled to a 10.57 GAA entering the
game, finished with 12 saves, six of them coming in the fourth
quarter including a stop against Catalino that would have sent the
game to overtime. The strong finish seemed more typical of the
steely teams that have consistently toughed out narrow games.
“We couldn’t flinch today. Despite them going on that
two goal swing, we didn’t flinch,” said Pietramala.
By contrast, the Terps (6-5) snatched defeat from the jaws of
victory, allowing a flurry of penalties to derail a comeback that
might have erased the memory of Maryland’s record-setting
seven-overtime loss to Virginia on April 3. The Terps were
bedeviled by 10 penalties for a total of 8:30. In a postgame press
conference, Terps head coach Dave Cottle noted some confusion over
a few of the calls.
“I’m still looking for Travis Reed’s
penalty,” said Cottle, in reference to Reed’s 1:00
penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct in a third-quarter scrum tipped
off by Hopkins Matt Dolente’s illegal check on Brynn Holmes.
Maryland got another team foul when Cottle reportedly asked the
refs for clarification on a call on Dan Burns’ illegal body
check with 1:55 remaining in the third quarter.
“I’ve been coaching for 30 years and I’ve never
gotten an unsportsmanlike conduct in my life. And I got one for
saying, ‘No one knows the call.’ And that’s all I
said. There was no curse word,” said Cottle.
“That was the first one I’ve gotten in 30 years. And I
would have liked to have cursed in order to get one. I would have
felt better about it.”
Despite his quibbles with the officials, Cottle accepted
responsibility for the loss. In contrast to Pietramala, Cottle felt
that the Hopkins-Maryland game would be a turning point for the
Terps.
“This is the beginning for our team,” said Cottle.
“You watch from here on, and this team is going to start
playing better now.”
