WASHINGTON — Weird things have a way of happening in Loyola-Georgetown men’s lacrosse games. An upset here, a down-to-the-wire finish there, even a four-overtime game.
Not Tuesday night at Cooper Field, though.
The Hoyas (11-1) rolled to their seventh consecutive victory, drubbing Loyola 14-7 to earn their first victory in the annual rivalry since 2015 and just their second in the last 14 meetings.
“It’s more than just a win for us, it’s a win for the program,” senior attackman Dylan Watson said. “Guys before us, we just wanted to do it for them. They can go to bed happy tonight knowing we beat them.”
Watson scored five goals and Graham Bundy Jr. added three goals and two assists for Georgetown, while senior James Reilly broke Andy Corno’s school record for career faceoff wins with his 13 of 24 showing against the Greyhounds (5-7). Reilly now has 634 faceoff victories.
Sophomore Davis Lindsey had career-highs in goals (two) and assists (three) and senior Sam Shafer matched a career-high with 17 saves for Loyola, which a year ago turned around its season on the strength of a weeknight upset of the Hoyas in late April to surge toward an NCAA tournament at-large berth.
Any hope of that was gone before Tuesday, and coach Charley Toomey is well aware his team’s only path to the postseason is by winning the Patriot League’s automatic berth. The Greyhounds finish the regular season with a trip to Colgate and a home date with Lehigh.
“Hopefully, this prepares us for what we’re going to see on Saturday and certainly a week from Friday,” Toomey said. “That’s the reality of this thing. We have to win the Patriot League. We know where we are.”
The Hoyas have shown an impressive aptitude for stitching together quick bursts of offense throughout the season, and they needed one after Loyola shrugged off a slow start to tie it at 3 early in the second quarter.
The response came in two spurts. Georgetown rattled off four goals in a span of 2:25 late in the first half to establish a 7-3 advantage, then got three more goals in less than two minutes just after the half to push the lead to 10-3.
“We just want to push the ball up and down — all day, every day,” Watson said.
In a sequence covering 9:27 that bridged halftime, the Hoyas scored seven goals to turn a tight rivalry game into a rout.
“You hope it comes out, and a lot of things have to happen for that to come out, whether it’s making saves, making stops, creating transition off the faceoff, whatever it may be,” Georgetown coach Kevin Warne said. “I think our guys, the more and more we do it, the more comfortable we get learning how teams are defending us and we can read situations a little bit better.”
The Greyhounds never cut the margin to less than five the rest of the way, doomed in part by a 25-turnover outing just three days after they committed 17 (12 in the second half) of a 14-9 loss to Boston University.
It’s part of what has been an uncharacteristic season for Loyola, which lost its first four games, finally got back to .500 for the first time this season earlier this month and now has dropped back-to-back contests.
To salvage something of their season, the Greyhounds will need to turn things around soon. And this year, they won’t have the benefit of using a defeat of the Hoyas as a springboard for greater things.
“It definitely has been rough, but Loyola has always been a team that learns from their mistakes well,” sixth-year long pole Ryan McNulty said. “Obviously, it’s taken us a little longer this year but I trust in our guys and our coaches. There’s always room and time for us to turn it around. I think now that our backs are really against the wall with Patriot league play ending, I think our guys are going to be forced to make a decision — either play like we know how we can, or keep [going] down the road that we’ve been going down.”