After falling in all three matches in California, Idaho looks to bounce back in Oregon
While most students were out living up their spring breaks, the Vandal men’s club lacrosse team was on a three-game road trip in California taking on Loyola Marymount, Chapman and San Diego State.
Idaho looked sharp out of the opening faceoff, losing just barely to Loyola in overtime. But then the travel seemed to catch up to the team as it lost the next two games, notching only nine goals to Chapman and SDSU’s 30 combined.
Nate Mattson | Argonaut
The men’s club lacrosse team practices through the cold and snow-ridden weather Wednesday at the Sprinturf. Idaho’s next set of games are Saturday against Humboldt State and Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. The Vandals are 4-5 on the season and 1-2 in PNCLL play.
“We were just putting way too easy of shots for them to save,” senior captain Patrick Tunison said. “We weren’t making him move enough. We did a good job with the two cage, just not putting the shots in the right spot.”
Idaho sits at a 4-5 record on the season, but with none of the road games thus far being in conference, the Vandals still remain at 1-2 in conference play. This leaves Idaho in the middle of the pack at fourth place in the conference standings.
“Chapman is No. 4 in the country and San Diego State is No. 10 in the country,” Idaho coach Sammy Vogel-Seidenberg said. “So we went into those games as a learning experience for us to get better and play good competition.”
Up next for the Vandals is a two-game road trip to Eugene, Oregon, to play the Humboldt State Lumberjacks and the Oregon Ducks Saturday and Sunday, respectively. Humboldt, sitting at a 3-3 record on the season, is Idaho’s final nonconference game before entering the final stretch of the season with four conference games.
For Idaho, the Oregon game is where they have their eyes set on.
“We take every game seriously, but that one has been marked on the calendar for a while,” Tunison said.
The Ducks sit just below the Vandals in the conference standings with a 1-2 conference record but 1-7 overall, giving Idaho the tiebreaker in conference standings. With a Sunday win, the Vandals would move to 2-2 in conference and give them a bit of a cushion in the conference standings as Washington State, Washington and Montana all have yet to get a conference win.
“For Oregon, that game is huge,” Vogel-Seidenberg said. “For us, that is playoffs. We win that game, we have a much better chance at going to the playoffs. If we don’t win that game, we’re really going to have to fight and we’re really going to have to sweep the rest of our games.”
Ryan Pavel can be reached at [email protected]