For the third time in four games the UMBC men’s lacrosse team sent a new goalie in to mind the net. This time it was sophomore Brian McCullough to start against No. 5 Johns Hopkins University.
Prior to the game McCullough had played just fewer than four minutes, all of which were last season. Against JHU he made eight saves but costly penalties and breakdowns from the senior laden defense left him vulnerable, as the Blue Jays slipped 16 goals past him.
But the goals allowed was a stat that Coach Don Zimmerman was interested in when assessing his performance.
“I thought he played very well,” Zimmerman said. “First start on Homewood field, he made some saves for us and cleared the ball well.
“What he’s been doing is practicing well; it’s not all what happens in a game. I want to see what Brian does in practice.”
For the first three games of the season the historically high powered offense struggled to get things going, but against JHU it was a different story, the offense played their best offense of the season for the first three and a half quarters of play before penalties and defensive breakdowns limited their opportunities.
“We started out strong,” said junior midfielder Bobby Stockton who recorded his third hat trick of the season. “We were sticking with them and everybody was playing hard and did their role.”
After falling behind by a quick goal by JHU, Stockton tied the game up less than two minutes later when he came around the goal for a quick shot on a man up situation.
JHU was able to get another goal just 14 seconds later after a break away after the face-off, but once again UMBC capitalized on their extra man opportunity when senior Matt Latham made a quick cut in from of the goal and put the shot in the upper right corner of the goal.
Kyle Wharton and Steven Boyle, who each recorded hat tricks in the game, as did Michael Kimmel who scored the opening goal for the Blue Jays, scored back-to-back goals for JHU to break the back and fourth scoring.
With just 48 seconds left in the first quarter Kyle Wimer made a dodge past a long stick defender right in front of the goal and made the over the top shot past the goalie to cut the UMBC deficit to just one after 15 minutes.
After more back to back scoring, UMBC final put together a three goal run in the third quarter, which started with a dropped save by Mike Gvozden while sophomore Shane Ryzner was there to clean it up and put it in the goal, followed by a shot by Stockton and a long pass up the field to Rob Grimm who scored on the one-on-one situation to get UMBC within just one goal of the Blue Jays.
But UMBC would score just one more goal after that point, while JHU found a way to score six times.
UMBC committed eight penalties in the game as JHU took advantage five times on extra man opportunities.
“It’s never good to get a penalty,” Stockton said. “We could have bounced back but it was unfortunate for us.”
After scoring just eight goals over the last two years while being stuck behind a bevy of talented midfielders, Stockton has stepped in with easy and has provided UMBC with a very powerful shot that has scored 11 times this season.
“I got to do my part as being a dodger too and me an Kyle sometimes dodge the long pole so we just have to find a way to work around and dodge shorties and get our match ups,” Stockton said.
Despite the poor fourth quarter, Zimmerman still saw this game as an improvement over his last three games.
“A loss is a loss and there are no moral victories but overall, looking at the big picture, our team made a nice step forward tonight.” Zimmerman said. “I was pleased we did a good job facing off, we did a good job with ground balls, clearing the ball, our man up got a lot better.”
Along with Stockton’s hat trick Jamie Kimbles and Rob Grimm each scored two goals. Kimbles has scored five goals in the last two games for UMBC.
On Saturday the Retrievers will have another big challenge as they will play No. 7 Princeton (3-0), who beat Johns Hopkins this season, in New Jersey.