Brown Thankful for Second Chance
by Brian Logue | Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff
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| Count Brown midfielder Jack Walsh as among those grateful to be in the NCAA tournament following last week's loss to Princeton. The Bears, presumably the final at-large team selected last Sunday, meet Hopkins in a nationally-televised, first-round game Saturday. The teams have not met in 29 years. |
Twenty years from now, Brown might look back at the Ivy League
championship that got away. But not today.
"It feels really cool to be in the tournament," said senior
midfielder Jack Walsh.
Walsh has seen the program go from the lows to the highs. Brown
won just two games his freshman year before earning a share of the
Ivy League championship last year. This year's team lost its chance
for a second straight Ivy League championship with a loss at
Princeton on Saturday, but is now in the NCAA tournament for the
first time since 1997.
"It's an interesting balance," said third-year head coach Lars
Tiffany. "Last year we won and didn't get to go. This year we lost
and we're going. Right now, I'd rather have this. We want more, and
we want more time together, and now we've got a chance to play for
a national championship."
Brown is ecstatic about its second chance after a disappointing
finish to the regular season. The Bears presumably edged out Loyola
for the final spot in the 16-team field.
"The whole day was terrible," said Walsh, looking back on last
weekend's loss to Princeton. "We got back to the locker room and we
found out Loyola had gone into overtime (with Johns Hopkins). By
the time we were in the showers, we found out they had lost, so we
felt a little better about our chances. Then on Sunday watching
Notre Dame was scary, but they pulled it out."
That set the stage for a tournament unveiling on Sunday night that
very well could have ended in disappointment. The team gathered at
Providence's Spats Pub to watch the selection show.
"It's pretty dangerous getting the whole team together and
creating a situation where there's either absolute jubilation or
total despair," said Tiffany. "We did get together last year too,
but that was a little different. We knew we weren't right on top of
the bubble last year. This year it could have gone either way."
Within 10 minutes the wait was over. Brown found out it would be
playing a first-round game at Johns Hopkins.
"We yelled, we hugged each other," said Tiffany. "I thought about
telling the men, 'Let's focus.' But then I decided we were going to
enjoy Sunday."
Now the focus has switched to Johns Hopkins, which the Bears play
at storied Homewood Field on Saturday before a national television
audience on ESPN2 and ESPNU at 12 noon.
"It raises the level of excitement," said Tiffany, a 1990 graduate
of Brown. "I've never played at Hopkins. It's been 29 years since
Brown has played Hopkins. I know we always wanted to play them, but
it's difficult to get on their schedule."
But Brown, led by one of the nation's best goalies in senior
Jordan Burke and a prolific attack unit (Andrew Feinberg, Kyle
Hollingsworth and Thomas Muldoon) that has combined for 145 points,
isn't happy just to be in the tournament.
"We're disappointed and mad about how we played last week," said
Tiffany. "We're going down there with a chip on our shoulder."
