Lacrosse team falls to Utes 25-10
It was another disappointing weekend for the Utah State lacrosse club team after it fell 25-10 to Utah Saturday in Logan.
It was a struggle from the beginning for the undermanned Aggie team.
“They had a lot more guys than we do. We’re hurting on numbers,” Aggie coach Evan Nitchman said. “That’s pretty much the reason there. We played a bad first quarter there, other than that, it was pretty much even.”
Utah came out on fire to start off the game, going up 10-0 in the first quarter. Nitchman said there really wasn’t much the Aggies could do to stop it.
He said he wasn’t really sure what happened in the first part of the game that allowed Utah its huge advantage. There were a lot of cutters going down the middle, he said, and the Aggies just weren’t following through on their defense.
Midfielder and freshman John Gilmore said USU definitely came out slow in the first quarter, but it was able to improve on it throughout the rest of the game.
“I think we did a pretty good job in the second quarter,” Gilmore said. “We were saying let’s forget about the first quarter, we knew we could play better than that. When you’re down like that … you’ve just got to play as hard as you can and try and win quarter by quarter.
“We improved off the first quarter for sure.”
The Aggies didn’t score until the beginning of the second quarter. Junior Johnny Randak put the ball in the goal for the Ags and brought the score to 10-1.
After another Utah goal, it looked like the Aggies were starting to put together a run after Agies William Babcock and Brian Miller both scored goals. But the Aggie defense couldn’t stop the Utes. And they managed to stay ahead by double-digits for most of the rest of the game.
“We’re short on numbers,” Gilmore said. “We’ve got to go give it what we got. I think they beat us a lot with having fresh legs. We got beat in the midfield because we couldn’t keep up with them on the fast breaks. We converted a lot on offense, we scored a lot of goals.
“But on defense our midfielders, myself and our other midfielders, were just kind of slow getting back.”
Despite the poor showing in the first quarter, Gilmore did say USU held its own throughout the rest of the game – tired legs and all.
“We’re coming off the field so tired,” he said. “We’re in pretty good shape considering how much we’ve been playing. We fought hard until the end.”
Nitchman said the Aggies need more players and recruitment is something the team is considering. He said he plans on going to high schools in the area and in Salt Lake to try to get more players on the sidelines during games.
The Aggies have one more home game before school gets out, Nitchman said. They will take on BYU Saturday at 1 p.m. in the Spectrum.
Nitchman said BYU is about the same caliber of team that USU has been facing all year. However, he said the team isn’t going to do anything different.
“Just in general, [we’re doing] what we’ve been doing all year,” he said. “We’re just going to do what we do.”
-aedmunds@cc.usu.edu
Utah State´s Stephen Hughs looks for a way around a Fort Wayne defender in a game earlier this season. (Photo by John Zsiray)