Even before the spring season got underway, coaches and players on the men's lacrosse team have been preaching that in a NESCAC conference stacked with national championship aspirants, every conference game would be vital to win.
The last week has proven that to be easier said than done.
After a surprising loss on Wednesday to conference rival Bowdoin, the Jumbos followed up with an even more shocking defeat, losing on the road to Williams on Saturday by a count of 13-10.
Tufts' record drops to 5-2 (2-2 NESCAC), and Williams moves to 5-3 (2-2 NESCAC). Both teams are now tied for fifth place in the conference with Amherst.
For the third straight game, Tufts was playing without All-American attack-man and team co-captain Bryan Griffin, who is out with a knee injury.
Early on, however, it was not the offense that struggled, as senior co-captain Devin Clarke scored within the first minute of play. The teams traded goals until Eph senior tri-captain Geoff McNally scored on a pass from sophomore midfielder Chris Merwin to give Williams a 3-2 lead. After that, Williams came alive, exploding with a barrage of scoring that resulted in six first-quarter goals. The quarter ended with the Ephs ahead 6-3, and the Jumbos found themselves in a position that had been unfamiliar to them until these past two games-they were being outplayed.
The second quarter was more of the same, and Tufts headed into halftime on the unpleasant end of a 9-5 deficit. The nine first half goals were more than the team had given up in any game this season.
The Jumbos' defense stiffened for the second half, allowing only two goals in each of the remaining quarters, but by that time, it was too late.
The Ephs were led by sophomore Matt Paster, who put a recent scoring drought behind him to score three goals. For the Jumbos, junior attack-man Mike O'Brien notched three goals, followed by Clarke and sophomore midfielder Matt Lanuto, who each had two. Juniors Dane Carillo and Billy Granger and sophomore Mark Warner all finished with a goal and two assists.
After the back-to-back losses, one has to begin to wonder whether or not Griffin's absence is disrupting the team's rhythm. The players maintain that the team has the ability to win without him. Bolstering that claim, the Jumbos dominated Trinity, 9-2, on Apr. 2 in the first game that Griffin missed. Trinity is a team that is relatively comparable to Williams in ability.
"Griff's a tremendous player, and a tremendous leader and presence on the field," said Alex Bezdek, a sophomore long-stick midfielder. "[But] no one guy makes or breaks a team. We're a solid enough and deep enough team that we can't even begin to rationalize that missing one player could be the cause of losing to two teams that we shouldn't have lost to."
Griffin commented on the difficulty of having to helplessly watch his team lose.
"I'm really struggling on the sideline watching the past two games," Griffin said. "After Wednesday, I was really hoping to play on Saturday, but I realized that I was incapable of going. It was really tough to watch from the sideline, and I feel like I'm letting the team down right now."
What makes the last two losses hardest to swallow is that there seems to be no single factor, other than perhaps Griffin's injury, that one can pick out to explain why the team is losing. For his part, Griffin wonders if the team has lost an element of the toughness that earned it the No. 3 ranking in the nation before the Bowdoin loss.
"Every team has to deal with adversity and injuries," Griffin said. "It's a matter of how the people still playing handle it. Right now we're proving ourselves to be an average team at best."
"We haven't lost to those teams in four years," Griffin added. "Since I've been here, we've never started panicking on the field or anything ... maybe we're soft right now. If we drop out of the top 20 after these two games, that might be the best thing for us. Maybe we can regain that chip on our shoulder and come out a lot more fired up for the next game."
The newest national rankings will be posted later today. If the team is to regain the chip of which Griffin speaks, it had better happen very, very fast. Bowdoin and Williams are strong teams, but the team's next challenge seems daunting in comparison. On Wednesday, the No. 7 Middlebury Panthers travel to Tufts for a 6:00 p.m. night game. The Panthers sit atop the conference leader board in a tie with Bowdoin.
Griffin says the chance of his returning for the Middlebury game is "a very slight possibility." Nonetheless, the Jumbos have always played tough against Middlebury and have yet to lose a game this year at home.
As for the two losses, the Jumbos are ready to leave them in the past.
"There are great players on our team, but the reason we've done so well is that we all care about each other, love the game, and love our coaches," Bezdek said. "We all still do. I have full faith in Coach Daly, Coach Mullin and Coach Miller to work with us and we'll listen to what they say and pull out of this."
