Merrimack isn’t accustomed to losing, not after emerging as a Division II power last decade and collecting national titles in 2018 and 2019.
So dropping a season opener usually isn’t in the cards for the Warriors.
“It was a very weird feeling,” coach Mike Morgan said. “When we lost the opener, a lot of our current players had never been 0-1. I hadn’t been 0-1 since my senior year of college. From coaching in high school and coaching at Merrimack as an assistant and for 12 more years as a head coach, that’s 17 years of never being 0-1.”
Only there were two more losses to come, tight setbacks against Dartmouth and Fairfield. It was in the latter game Morgan admits he went “scorched earth” with his players after falling behind 5-1 after the first quarter, effectively conveying the message he expected them to be plenty competitive with Division I teams. The Warriors knotted it at 7 by halftime, a welcome response even if Fairfield ultimately secured a 14-11 victory.
Still, the tone was set for Merrimack, which collected its first Division I triumph Saturday at Michigan. Charlie Bertrand scored five goals in a 14-12 victory.
“They were done not winning games,” Morgan said. “We might have underrated how much focus and desire we needed to put in to make the plays. We had to learn it the hard way.”
While Merrimack isn’t overly experienced, it still has Bertrand, a two-time Division II USILA player of the year and a roster of players recruited to play scholarship lacrosse. It was never wise to think the Warriors would be pushovers.
Now, they have something to match a program on campus that is thriving during the school’s first Division I season. Merrimack’s men’s basketball team is 19-11 and earned its first D-I victory at Northwestern in November. Now, the men’s lacrosse team has a road defeat of a Big Ten school of its own.
“It did validate us, in a way,” Morgan said. “I think you’re pretty good if you can win a game like that. If you’re a bottom 10 or 20 team, you don’t go win in Ann Arbor.”
Cleveland State gets a first, too
Cleveland State added another milestone Saturday, edging Air Force 12-11 in overtime for the first victory in program history over a ranked team.
More important to the Vikings, though, was moving past a 17-7 drubbing at Notre Dame the week before and collecting their first triumph of the season.
“The fact it was over a ranked team makes it a little sweeter, but our guys responded from what was a not-great showing at Notre Dame and came back with a real sense of urgency from our seniors,” coach Andy German said. “We hadn’t had one of those games in a long time, and they weren’t happy about it.”
Leading the way was junior Tristan Hanna, who scored his seventh goal of the day 21 seconds into overtime to lock up the most high-profile victory in the Vikings’ four-season history. Hanna has 14 goals on the season, more than halfway to his 2019 total of 26, and his relentless motor provides a moving target near the crease that is difficult for defenses to contain.
Perhaps the most impressive facet of Cleveland State’s trip west was how it fared the next day on short rest against Denver. The Vikings (1-4) led by two late in the second quarter and were still within a goal in the middle of the third quarter before the Pioneers pulled away for a 10-6 victory.
“There were times in the past during those first couple years that we were just happy to be on the field with those guys,” German said. “You’d look and see coach [Bill] Tierney and his staff and some their bigger names like Trevor Baptiste and Ethan Walker. This time, we weren’t just happy to be there. We were there to compete and to win. Some of that comes from a senior class that’s been there and is not just happy to be invited to the party. We want to be at the party and perform well and be in the mix.”