The Bucs travelled up to Arlington on Saturday for the first ever NORTEX Tourney, in which teams from many of the different conferences in the nation made the trip to see how they matched up against those of us in the LSA.

Southwestern's first game of the weekend was against WCLL opponent UC-Irvine, a team, which honestly did not have much publicity in its own league.

Over the past four years, Southwestern has continued to try and improve its program by playing out of conference opponents. Each time, however, we have come up on the short end. Unfortunately, the game against UCI was no different.

The game started with UCI scoring two quick goals on SU off of iso's up top before we were able to make adjustments on that. By the end of one, the score was 3-0 in favor of UCI, and SU was, for lack of a better word, flat.

As the second quarter started, so did the rain, which did not let up for the rest of the day. Without much intensity, and facing a team that was very well coached and came ready to play, the Bucs refused to set up in offense, forcing shots and passes, and missing many opportunities that were available.

For instance UCI ran rides that included their goalie coming out to the top of their box, often leaving an attackman open in front of the crease with no one else around. While SU realized this early on and even placed an attackman behind the goal as all players were instructed to shoot for the empty net from the other side of the field on clears, only one shot made it in, off a rocket half-field shot by Gette. Several other shots just missed early on which would have made the game much different for the Bucs.

As it turned out, the strategy for UCI worked and SU was not able to capitalize, and by half-time took a 6-1 lead over a very frazzled SU team.

At half-time the UTA representatives decided to call all the games, with no idea of when or if the games would be "resumed". After some conversations, it was decided to resume the game at another field. After waiting for maintenance to fill in some dangerous holes on the field and standing in the rain for over an hour, the second half resumed. However, SU was not able to make the comeback that they had hoped for. The rain had made all bounce shots almost obsolete, and SU still refused to settle the ball on offense, with every person touching the ball feeling they themselves had to find a way to make something happen.

The defense did do an exceptional job all day, and only allowed 2 goals in the second half against UCI. Most goals were off of fast breaks as UCI was able to catch our middies still in the box many times while getting the ball to their attack.

Credit must be given to the Anteaters as they were a very disciplined team, and flat out came to play. The made very few mistakes, while SU made many.

UCI was definitely the better team and flat out out-hustled SU, and literally outplayed the Bucs the entire game.

Oddly enough, after winning its first three games at home solidly, it was a loss that woke the guys on the team up.

Congrats to the UCI team and their coaches, who played with class and ended up dominating the teams they played at the tourney, going home 3-0 for the trip.

SU went to Jake and Sample's house to dry off and get prepared for NSU, the team that knocked them out of the playoffs last year.

Bill Bowman

Back to Men's Schedule/Results (2005)
Back to Men's Lacrosse Home
Back to Lacrosse Home