Men’s lacrosse playoff preview

Even though his second-seeded team is coming off Saturday’s 23-9 win over Keystone College, Pennsylvania College of Technology men’s lacrosse coach Jordan Williams said he is taking nothing for granted entering Tuesday’s 7 p.m. home contest against No. 3 seed Keystone in a United East Conference semifinal.

Headed to the playoffs for the fourth straight season, the Wildcats enter the game with records of 4-1 in the UE and 9-8 overall, while Keystone is 3-2, 6-9.

“We can’t just assume that the same thing is going to happen. We’ve got to prepare like we’re playing for the national championship every single week. If we do what we’re supposed to, we’re going to have a good opportunity to move forward to the championship,” Williams said.

“If we look past them, they have a lot of skill, they’ve got some offensive weapons, they’ve got some good players that could make us pay. The cool thing is we don’t have to change our game plan; we don’t have to scout. It saves us time to focus on us as well,” the fourth-year coach continued.

The winner of that match will face the winner of another Tuesday game between the No. 1 seed and perennial power St. Mary’s (Md.) College (5-0 UE, 11-6 overall) and No. 4 seed Cairn University (2-3, 4-8) for the championship on Saturday at the home field of the highest remaining seed, with a berth in the NCAA Division III tournament on the line.

Reflecting on his team’s season so far, Williams said, “Overall, there have been a lot of ups and downs. We’re young and inexperienced at a lot of positions. There have been positives and negatives. We’ve had weeks where we’ve looked really, really good and we’ve had weeks where we’ve dropped some games that if we’d played to our potential, we don’t do that.

“We have a lot of guys who are really athletic and they want to push the tempo; they want to play fast. When we play fast, that’s when we look our best. When we play timid, we play scared; that’s when we struggle.

“When you look at the entire season, we have moved forward from last year on the field maturity-wise, composure-wise. It’s the second season now in the playoffs. We’re at 0-0. I’m happy and excited to get a chance to host our first-ever playoff game and hopefully win our first-ever playoff game as well.”

If the Wildcats reach the final, they will most likely meet St. Mary’s, a team they are 0-4 against lifetime, including an 18-3 home defeat on April 13.

“We’ve got to throw a lot of stuff at them to see what works and what doesn’t work. We played very good against them for about 12 minutes in the first quarter, where we felt we could hang with them. Yes, they’re athletic. Yes, they’re skilled. Yes, they’re well-coached, but we could hang with them.

“It comes down to, we’ve got to play a perfect game and they don’t have to play a perfect game. We are the underdogs. They’re a better team on paper. We have to play a perfect game, and we have to execute, and we have to hope they don’t execute on our mistakes.

“If we compete for 60 minutes, the scoreboard is the scoreboard. If we can compete, we play and we fight, I don’t care what the score is. The ideal goal is to win, but the next ideal goal is to close the gap as much as possible so we can have confidence going into next season.”

In all matches, Penn College has scored 216 goals and its opponents 166. In conference action only, Aidan McFalls of Gilbertsville leads the team with 20 goals, 15 assists and 35 points; AJ Dotson of Wilmington, Delaware, has 12 goals, 16 assists and 28 points; Jake Small of Bloomsbury, New Jersey, has 8 goals, 8 assists and 16 points, and Harrison Schlachta of Collegeville has 11 goals, three assists and 14 points.

Final UE regular-season standings: St. Mary’s (Md.) College 5-0, Penn College 4-1, Keystone College 3-2, Cairn University 2-3, Bryn Athyn 1-4, Rosemont 0-5.

Schedule/Record/Series History
Overall record: 9-8
UE record: 4-1
Tuesday, April 30 — United East semifinal host Keystone College, 7 p.m. (Penn College leads 1-0)
Saturday, May 4 — United East Championship hosted by highest seed, TBA

For more about the United East, visit the conference website.
For additional information, visit the Wildcats Athletics website.