Oct. 17, 2008

by Matt DaSilva, Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff

Funny things happened March 18 and May 19 - Jeff Cohen did not score a goal.

It's newsworthy when Long Island's all-time leading scorer fails to find the cage, most of all to him. He kept a news clipping of Syosset's March 18 loss to Garden City on his bedroom wall, then helped avenge the May 19 loss to Oceanside a week later with six goals in that rematch, a Nassau County Class A quarterfinal.

Cohen led the Braves, a No. 4 seed in their county, all the way to the New York state championship game, where they fell to West Genesee. His 260 career goals, dating back to his varsity debut as an eighth-grader in 2004, are the most in Long Island history.

Now, the visions are of Cohen and former Garden City gun Dean Gibbons linking up at Harvard, where head coach John Tillman waits with equal anticipation.

Countdown caught up with Tillman over the summer to talk shop - everything from Cohen and recruiting, to the significance of the year 2010 in Division I men's lacrosse and the rising stars in the coaching profession.

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How did the summer recruiting season go?

It's been one big camp, tournament, clinic, tryout, all-star game, and that's pretty well it. I just got off a plane from Baltimore, up here [in Cambridge] to help a guy through an interview. We have a day camp going on. Overnight I'll fly back down to Baltimore, stop by a day camp down there, then the Free State Games, the Long Island Games, the Sizzle, Brine Shootout, Empire State Games, the UVA Tournament, Champ Camp - but you know, same old, same old.

It worked when you landed Jeff Cohen from Syosset (N.Y.), now a freshman. What are your expectations of him in '09?

He's kind of everything you could hope for in a recruit - great student, obviously a talented player, a guy who'll represent the program well, who wants to be challenged. He's excited about coming in and trying to make his mark. He knows he's going to have to earn it. Nobody's guaranteed anything in our program.

He certainly brings a skill set and track record. Physically, he's got a body that's strong enough to withstand the difficult freshman year. I think he's got some things going for him that maybe a typical freshman doesn't. He's played in so many games since eighth grade.

Where might he fit on the field for Harvard?

I think he could play attack or midfield. He's more suited to attack. He kind of has a knack for putting the ball in the back of the net. Certain guys have that knack to be in the right place at the right time and be opportunistic. He just seems to be that guy.

Rising freshman Jeff Cohen of Syosset, N.Y. (Photo: Jon Reiss)

Funny, that sounds exactly like what most were saying about Dean Gibbons, another Long Island product who certainly came through for you at Harvard and on the U.S. U-19 team this year. Is there a comparison to be drawn there?

Jeff is a lot stronger than Dean was at this point coming into it. That is a great asset. Maybe Jeff isn't a guy you look at to have tremendous speed, but he is so strong and, to his credit, does a lot of work in conditioning and weight rooms. He can handle a lot of the physical play at the Division I level. He's suited for that.

I do think both of them have similarities. They also have the ability to actually play off each other pretty well. When they play together, they'll think in similar ways. One guy's moving, thinking about cutting; the other's thinking, "Maybe he'll get there." Hopefully, they'll develop a chemistry where they're ahead of the play together.

There were times during U-19 pre-games that Gibbons looked like he might fall asleep - then he'd turn it on for three goals. Does his demeanor belie his performance?

Boy, you hit Dean in a nutshell. He's one of the best kids I've ever coached. He's very low-maintenance and so laid back. He quietly goes about his business, but by the time the game's done, you're like, "He was three and three?"

You came to Harvard last year to take over what some thought was an NCAA tournament-caliber team with a cupboard stocked with talent, and struggled to a 6-8 finish. What did you learn?

Last year was interesting, because we came in so late. (Tillman was hired Sept. 6, 2007.) Most recruiting was done. We had to get to know our guys really quickly. I came in September - school had started at Navy. I had to get a feel of what we had with only 12 practices and while trying to hire a staff. We were a group in transition. It seems like it was a tornado all year.

We had nobody on our team who had ever taken a faceoff at the college level, and we lost our top scorer [from `07]. I'd love to see what cupboard we had that was full. I'd like to see what they were looking at.

Was it difficult to implement systems on the fly?

We tried to play more of a motion offense. That was new to all of them. Offensively we were really trying to find our way all year. We had three starting attackmen that were all new. Dean was playing in high school the year before, Jesse [Fehr] was hurt the year before and Travis [Burr] was on midfield the year before. They were learning on the fly not only a new offense, but a new position.

What are your goals for 2009?

We want to keep building the culture of a hard-working group that's very unselfish. This group is resilient.

Five of your eight losses in 2008 came by two or fewer goals. Will a more experienced group win those games in '09?

Some of our kids were almost surprised to be in those games. We were down 7-0 to Princeton the year before, and they basically knocked us out. We hadn't beaten them in 18 years. And yet this year we were up three goals in the fourth quarter. (Harvard lost, 9-8). I think they proved something to themselves: we can be successful against a team that has had as much success as anyone else the last 20 years in our league.

"The big thing everybody is still waiting on is the shot clock. When is that going to happen?" Harvard men's lacrosse coach John Tillman

You were once the prototypical "up-and-coming" assistant at Navy before coming to Harvard. Nick Myers recently took the reins at Ohio State after serving there as an assistant under Joe Breschi. Who do you think are the rising stars in the industry?

You look at Hopkins. I think Billy Dwan and Bobby Benson both do a terrific job. I'm lucky to have Kevin Warne, who was an associate coach at UMBC, and I was lucky enough to grab him and bring him up here. I think Ben DeLuca has done a terrific job at Cornell. He's certainly a guy you have to look at. Marc VanArsdale at Virginia has done a super job down there. Andrew Copelan did a super job at Maryland. (Editor's note: Copelan was hired as the new head coach at Fairfield after this interview.)

Certainly, there are some really good guys out there with great track records that you see a lot on the recruiting circuit, grinding it out.

The year 2010 appears to be a banner one for Division I men's lacrosse. There'll be 60 teams, the new stick regulations go into effect and the arrival of a Big East conference has forecasted massive realignment. Do you think we'll eventually look back on it as a year that defined the sport?

It's interesting to say, once you put all those things in there. What if they don't change the stick regulations? We've been known to be a bit of a waffling group. We want to do something, then go back and change it, change it again. It'll be interesting to see if that'll happen with sticks, like the faceoff rule - we took it out, put it back in and tweaked it about 100 times since.

I do think that with the conferences changing, that will result in changes to schedules and new rivalries created. It'll be really interesting to see which rivalries are maintained. One that pops up is Syracuse - all of a sudden they pick up Notre Dame and have to play Providence and St. John's. What do they do with teams they've played for a long time like Virginia or Loyola? Who gets dropped? Do they keep Hobart?

Some people are saying let's get through '09, because 2010 is going to be a free-for-all anyway.

Do you foresee any new developments furthering the free-for-all?

The big thing everybody is still waiting on is the shot clock. When's that going to happen? Every year, more people get excited about it, but I don't know if anybody wants to pull the trigger on it. If you're a brand new program, you're fortunate enough to have someone do your scorebook, let alone a shot clock. Some of these one-goal games, someone's going to screw up the shot clock. Do you want to put another variable into that, to take the game out of the kids' hands and put it in someone else's hands when they don't know anything about the sport?

You go to Mount St. Mary's on a Tuesday afternoon - who's running the shot clock? You kind of have to understand the game and be on top of it to be done right.

I'm all for anything that makes the game better and helps promote the expansion of the sport. The game's bigger than all of us. If we don't think like that, if we stand on a soapbox, we're missing the chance to make the game better and get more kids involved with an opportunity to play in college. We need more teams to jump on board.

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Countdown to '09: Archive

Oct. 3, 2008 - Vanderbilt's Cathy Swezey
Sept. 26, 2008 - Mercyhurst's Chris Ryan
Sept. 19, 2008 - NYIT's Keith Henderson
Sept. 5, 2008 - Northwestern's Kelly Amonte Hiller
Aug. 29, 2008 - Cabrini's Scott Reimer
Aug. 15, 2008 - Hobart's T.W. Johnson
Aug. 8, 2008 - Penn's Ali Deluca
Aug. 1, 2008 - Chapman's Mike Wood
July 25, 2008 - Southern New Hampshire's Mary Squire
July 18, 2008 - Michigan's Trevor Yealy
July 11, 2008 - Johns Hopkins' Dave Pietramala
July 4, 2008 - Hamilton's Kallie Briscoe
June 27, 2008 - North Carolina's Joe Breschi
June 20, 2008 - Colby's Jon Thompson