Feb. 24, 2008

Final Stats

Staten Island, NY - The Wagner College men's lacrosse team dropped a 10-2 decision to Robert Morris in its 2008 home opener, despite an offensive attack that produced 35 shots.

Wagner fell behind by an early 5-0 count before settling into the game. Junior attack Jeff Policicchio put the Seahawks on the board with an unassisted goal with 10:07 left in the first half as Colonials went into intermission with a 5-1 lead. Robert Morris rattled off the next five goals to push the lead to 10-1 before sophomore midfielder Sean Travis (Calverton, NY/ Riverhead) scored an extra-man goal with 2:09 left to play after receiving a feed from Policicchio.

Senior attack Andrew Watt paced Robert Morris with four goals while senior midfielder Michael Fleming was the Colonials' top play-maker with one goal and four assists. Statistically, the game was much closer than the final score would indicate as Robert Morris led in shots taken by a slim 41-35 margin and an even slimmer margin in faceoffs, winning 8-15. The Colonials also held a 28-18 edge in ground balls.

Robert Morris sophomore goalie Sal Barcia had 23 saves while Wagner junior goalie Brandon Waszak (Frederick, MD/ Linganore) turned away 15 shots.

"I thought we showed improvement over our first game in several areas,' said Seahawk first-year head coach Jason Rife. "We certainly took many more shots and created many more scoring opportunities than we did last week (12 shots vs. Quinnipiac) but we cannot afford to come out sluggish and get behind so much early.

"Also, when we have chances, we need to capitalize," Rife added. "Their goalie was good and he made a lot of nice saves but with the amount of shots we had, we need to cash in more. I like a lot of the things we did out there. It's a building process."

The Seahawks are next in action on Wednesday when they travel to Easton, PA to face Lafayette in a 3:30 pm face-off.