The goal was to sweep the road-trip — that didn’t happen — but the next best thing did for Idaho lacrosse Saturday and Sunday in California.
Idaho (1-1, 0-0 PNCLL) expected its first contest against the Aggies of UC Davis (2-2, 0-1 WCLL) to be the more difficult of the weekend’s matchups, and it proved true as the Vandals dropped at 16-9 decision Saturday. But Idaho wasted no time recovering and demoralized San Jose State (0-1, 0-1 WCLL) 16-2 Sunday.
Coach John Andrysiak said the loss was largely a result of unforced errors committed by his squad he chalks up to inexperience and a lack of focus.
“There were a lot of unforced errors. … not catching the ball, not scooping and picking up the ball. Just dropping passes,” Andrysiak said. ” … there’s nine guys out of the 22 guys that played this weekend that had never started, or played lacrosse, or college lacrosse game.”
He said the seven-point loss to UC Davis isn’t a terrible loss and when a team loses by 10 or more, major issues need cleaned up. Sophomore midfielder Colin Cain was as optimistic as Andrysiak regarding the UC Davis loss and said a lot of the problem came from first-game jitters.
“Unfortunately it took us a whole half or so to get those (jitters) out,” Cain said. “But like I said, we settled down … and we started playing and started producing like we know we can.”
Idaho came within four points of the Aggies in the second half, but was not able to finish a comeback. Junior defender Eric Larsen said the loss was a team loss where both sides of the ball didn’t posses or play clean lacrosse. Larsen agreed with Andrysiak and said first-game kinks need to be ironed out. The pair believes Sunday’s beatdown of the Spartans is a step in the right direction.
“We were all there that day, like everything was working,” Larsen said. “Our defense was on. Offense, I mean they got so many shots off. It was insane. To score 16 points, it was just an overall a great day.”
Andrysiak was pleased with the way his team executed, but not just because the Vandals lit up the scoreboard.
“We ran our offense like we were supposed to,” Andrysiak said. “The ball wasn’t on the ground a lot and we possessed the ball … that’s huge when you’re trying to win a game because if you can possess the ball it takes the chance for the other team to hold it out of the equation and it really gave us an opportunity to work on the things that we needed to work on.”
Senior attackman John Kopke owned the front lines, tallying 10 points off six goals and four assists against San Jose State. Andrysiak said Kopke’s play is about all a coach can ask for in any given game.
“He was a facilitator and a scorer and you can’t ask for anything more as a coach,” Andrysiak said. “You want a guy to be even between assists and goals and I mean that’s about as close as you’re going to get.”
Other Vandals in the stat book were Colton Raichl with nine points off eight goals and one assist, Trystan Chambers and Patrick Tunison, each with four points off three goals and one assist, and goalie Blake Uphus allowed 17 goals with 14 saves.
Idaho will have nearly two weeks to fine-tune.
The Vandals travel to the Rose City to face Portland State March 3 and Oregon State March 4 in Corvallis.
Nick Groff can be reached at [email protected]