We had an absolutely gorgeous day for a lacrosse game up here on Wednesday and ended up drawing a nice crowd for our first NCAA appearance in four years.  

As I told the guys before the game, Montclair was the perfect opponent for us at this point in the season.  After not playing well last weekend in the NESCAC semis, the last thing we needed was a pushover.  We needed to be challenged.  If we were fortunate enough to come out with a win against a good opponent we could feel good about it and draw confidence from that experience.    We have never played Montclair so we didn't know much about them heading into the game beyond a few films we were able to dig up from this season.   Playing an unfamiliar opponent also turned out to be a good thing, we had to focus on ourselves and what we needed to do in order to be successful. Montclair plays in a conference that isn't quite as deep as the NESCAC but they did schedule a tough out of conference slate this year with games against Cortland, Union, Denison, and picked up wins over RPI, Stevens, and Dickinson.  These guys were a confident group and had played against some great competition.

So, when we found ourselves tied up at 5 halfway through the 2nd quarter it felt like it would be a back and forth game the rest of the way.  Fortunately for us, Joel Blockowicz stuck a nice shot out of a time-out with about five minutes left in the half and from that point on our guys loosened up and started clicking.  

The game ball went to first-year Nick Peterson who finished with 9 ground balls to go along with a big time goal in transition.  On a day when it took most of the team a quarter and a half to get going, Nick was making plays from the start and played with a ton of confidence.  Hopefully it rubs off on some guys and we get a few more performances like that down at Amherst tomorrow!

Amherst is having a great season as they're now 17-2 and ranked #6 in the country.  Their two losses have come to Tufts in the NESCAC final on Sunday and to us back in March.  We will face a tough challenge tomorrow but it's a fantastic opportunity for our team and I know this group will be ready to go.  Should be a great game!  Game time is 1pm.