2008 Woodie Awards
Never Say Die: Hounds upset Hoyas, claim first in ECAC
Dave Lomonico
Issue date: 4/15/08 Section: Sports
| |
|
Sports Editor
Loyola's head coach Charley Toomey glanced up at the scoreboard at Diane Geppi-Aikens Field after senior Shane Koppens scored his fifth and final goal against No. 4 Georgetown. It read Home 11, Away 9 … Time: 00:30. Toomey finally let out a sigh of relief. "We might get this one," he thought.
Thirty seconds later, the scoreboard still read 11-9, and Loyola's celebration could officially begin.
"We wanted this game so so bad," Koppens said in the aftermath of the Jesuit war. Outsiders dubbed this season a "transition year" for a young Loyola team. Sure, they've had their inconsistencies, but they're also 5-0 in the ECAC for the first time in school history. Two more wins, against Fairfield and Hobart, and they'll be conference champs and headed to the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive year.
"We've had some big games around here the last couple years," Toomey said. "We've beaten Duke, we've beaten Syracuse, so we're not surprised by this. We expect this."
In other words, "take that, doubters and media types."
It took a complete effort to oust the favored Hoyas, and the 11-9 final hardly gives credence to the numerous Greyhound contributors. Perhaps that scoreboard should have read Shane Koppens 7 (points), Brendan Cannon 3; or Jake Hagelin 9 (goals allowed), Miles Kass 11; or Tim McDermott 12 (faceoffs won), Dan Vinson 6.
And it's just too bad the scoreboard can't translate P.T. Ricci's stellar defense, Paul Richards' wing play, or David Moore's leadership ("This is what we're supposed to do," Moore said to his younger teammates after taking a 3-0 lead, according to Toomey).
Koppens, however, gets the headlines in this one after scoring a career-high seven points, despite being double teamed and guarded by one of the best defenders in the country, Jerry Lambe.
More impressively, three of his goals came in crunch time. With the game tied at eight and the clock dwindling under 10 minutes, Koppens took a feed from freshman Matt Langan to put the Hounds back on top. A few minutes later, Koppens went unassisted to make it a two-goal game, but Cannon kept Georgetown alive by sneaking one under Hagelin's stick. After a tense final three minutes, Koppens finally shut the door, taking a transition pass from Ricci and converting it into the Hounds' 11th goal.
"I like having the ball in my stick in those situations," Koppens said. "I knew [Lambe] was one of the best defenders in the country, but I knew my teammates were going to set picks for me so I could get my hands free and get good looks."
The Hoyas tied the game three times - 6-6, 7-7 and 8-8 - and after falling behind 3-0 and then 4-1, they never trailed by more than two goals. But each time the Hoyas came back Loyola had an answer. In the latter stages, that answer was Koppens. But Hagelin, McDermott, the wings and the defense all delivered in this one, too.
"That's a lot of heart right there, the whole defensive unit," Hagelin said. "We knew Georgetown was going to make a run, but we stepped up."
Hagelin, with an occasional flair for the spectacular, tallied 11 saves and excelled in clearing the ball. McDermott spurred the transition game at the X by going 12-for19, and he was helped along by Ricci's game-high nine groundballs. Paul Richards added four groundballs.
"After every goal it starts with the groundball," Toomey said. "Tim did a great job, and our wing play with P.T., Tyler Ebsary and Paul Richards really played well. We competed today."
It took just two minutes for the competition to get going as defender Joe Landry scored to put the Hounds on top. Loyola fed off the energy, but after the initial surge neither team could gain much momentum.
The Hoyas wasted an opportunity to tie when the Hounds lost two men to penalties. Georgetown fired a shot at Hagelin, but the freshman goaltender made the save and preserved the lead.
Then, at the 3:03 mark, Craig Dowd had a wide-open look and went high to high, but Hagelin read it perfectly and recorded another save.
In the first 30 minutes, Hagelin had six saves and kept the potent Hoyas attack to just three scores. His counterpart, Kass, also stood out, denying the Hounds from increasing their lead late in the second period. At halftime, Kass withstood a 22-shot Greyhound onslaught, recording nine saves while allowing just five goals.
With the score still 1-0, Loyola caught a break when Georgetown was whistled for an illegal stick, leaving the Hoyas a man down for the final three minutes of the first quarter. Jake Wilcox took advantage, firing a bullet with just four seconds left to put the Hounds up 2-nil.
Freshman Eric Lusby then capitalized on another man-up after a Koppens pass. Loyola, which started the game 0-for-2 on man-ups, came back with a pair of extra-man goals. Georgetown, meanwhile, was 0-for-4.
Ironically, the Hoyas got on the board on a "man-down" opportunity. Cannon's shot wasn't pretty, but it cut the Loyola deficit to 3-1, and sometimes that's all you need to get started.
Koppens answered right back, squeezing between two defenders to push the lead back to three, but Dan D'Agnes' goal cut the lead in half, and Andrew Brancaccio made it a one-goal game. Junior middie Jimmy Daly then connected for a 5-3 lead, which is where the game stayed for the remainder of the half.
The Hoyas slashed the Greyhounds' lead back down to one midway through the third frame by sandwiching a pair of goals around a Koppens score. The latter part of the period mirrored the first … literally. The Hoyas tied the game at six, Wilcox came right back with No. 7, and the Hoyas tied it up again. But the Hounds reigned supreme in this back-and-forth battle as Richards scored to make it 8-7.
The referees missed a sideline call at the start of the final frame that cost the Greyhounds the lead, but Loyola, poised throughout, kept the score-and-be-scored-upon theme going as Koppens scored three times to close it out.
"Shane was incredible; he does what you expect in a senior," Toomey said. "We're asking him to dodge and create, and he did an unbelievable job in not only winning his matchup, but allowing other people to win their matchups."
Loyola will be counting on Koppens and the rest of the seniors to keep the young team focused over the next two weeks. There's an NCAA tournament in sight, but first it's on to Fairfield next Saturday.
"Fairfield's a great team," Koppens said. "We've got to get ready for them and get that 'W.'"
Be the first to comment on this story