Once again we came out on the wrong end of a tight game the other night in the Carrier Dome.   RIT scored with 6 seconds remaining to complete their comeback and go ahead for good at 11-10.  It was a fantastic lacrosse game and a great experience to play against an opponent like RIT that presents so many challenges with the way they play. It was also a big deal for our team to be able to play in such a historic venue, even if it was mostly empty! I hope that experience will pay dividends for us going forward, we will find out soon enough with Amherst coming to town today.

RIT definitely graduated some firepower from the squad we saw at Homewood last year but they are still an explosive team in transition.  Their long stick midfielder is one of the best players we've gone up against in a long time, outstanding in transition, excellent off the ground, and great instincts on the defensive end.   With a few exceptions we did a good job of limiting their transition and matching them in the sub game at which they are the best team I've ever seen.

Defensively our guys executed our game plan with only a few breakdowns and Will Ernst stood tall in the cage.  On offense we generated great looks and were extremely efficient at that end of the field.  The surprise of the night was how well RIT faced off, we have been so successful there all season and didn't think they had a specialist who could match up with John Jackson.  Their kid did a good job of tying things up and their wing play was much better than ours.

The game was back and forth most of the way with it being tied up at 4 at halftime and after they took 6-5 lead in the third we went on a four goal run to go up 9-6 with 2 minutes to play in the quarter.  From that point on RIT played with more poise than we did.  We came up with a bunch of stops at the end of the third and start of the fourth quarter but either failed to clear the ball or gave it right back to them after an ill-advised shot.   Our lack of poise helped spark a 4 goal run by RIT which allowed them to take the lead once more at 10-9 with 4 minutes to go.  

At that point our team responded as they always do and senior Kyle Soroka stuck a nice shot rolling back to his right to tie the game at 10 with just over three minutes to go.    We ended up with the ball with a chance to win it and Kyle had another good look which hit the pipe and after we backed it up, we turned the ball over with just over 20 seconds to go. Clear for RIT, timeout, and game winner with 6 seconds remaining.

We've talked about what we're able to control going forward after all of these close losses and that is our effort, our dedication to the team, and our mindset the next time we're in a close game.  We will need to embrace that opportunity to come out on top and not fear the possibility of another close loss after we've given everything we have for the team.  Winners embrace that challenge and while we've yet to show it on the scoreboard, I still believe we have a locker room full of winners.