St. John's University Athletics
St. John's Releases 2008 Men's Lacrosse Schedule
10/11/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Lacrosse
Oct. 11, 2007
QUEENS, N.Y. - Second-year head coach of the St. John's men's lacrosse team, Jason Miller, announced the schedule for the 2008 season on Wednesday.
"Our schedule this season includes a variety of competitive teams from not only our conference, the ECAC, but from the other big lacrosse conferences such as the ACC, the Patriot League and the Colonial Conference," Miller said.
The Red Storm will host six of its 13 games this spring, including four strong league opponents. In 2007, St. John's finished 5-8 overall, 2-5 in the ECAC, with both league wins on its home turf.
Miller shook up the non-conference schedule from the past three years, adding Holy Cross, Lehigh and Duke back to the mix, while moving Bucknell and Bellarmine off the agenda and Lafayette to pre-season play.
"The additions of both Holy Cross and Lehigh will give us the opportunity to play two strong opponents out of the Patriot League," said Miller. "And when you're given the chance to play a high-caliber program such as Duke, you want to jump on it. This year it worked out in our favor so we grabbed at the opportunity."
The Red Storm will face five 2007 top 25 ranked opponents in 2008, giving the team a solid strength of schedule.
The team will open the fall season in mid-October with the annual Lacrosse for Leukemia Tournament in Baltimore, Md., where the Red Storm will face-off against UMBC and Mount St. Mary's in exhibition play on Oct. 20. St. John's will play one more exhibition contest against Scared Heart at home on Oct. 27.
The Red Storm tunes up with three road exhibition games, going up against C.W. Post and NYIT for the second season in a row in a Feb. 2 double-header at C.W. Post, before traveling to Easton, Pa., for its last exhibition game against the Lafayette Leopards.
Regular season play begins at home for the Red Storm when the team hosts the first of two Patriot League match-ups, the Holy Cross Crusaders on Feb. 16. The home-opener is the earliest start in St. John's history.
The team will take to the road for the next three Saturdays. In week two, the Red Storm will face Quinnipiac of the Great Western League. The Feb. 23 match-up will be the second ever between the opponents. St. John's came away with a 9-8 victory at DaSilva Memorial field last season.
Week three has the Red Storm meeting its first league opponent, Georgetown, March 1, in the nation's capital. The Hoyas finished fourth in the 2007 USILA poll. Last season, the Red Storm played the then-No. 1 Hoyas in both its home- and league-opener.
St. John's will continue its tour of historic cities as the team travels to Philadelphia on March 8 to face the Drexel Dragons on their home-turf for the second straight season. The Dragons finished the 2007 season ranked 17th in the USILA national poll and first in the Colonial Conference, just missing a berth to the 2007 NCAA playoffs.
The rest of March has the Red Storm playing alternate home and away games, in conference and out. On March 15, the Red Storm will host its first ECAC contest against the Loyola Greyhounds, who finished 12th in the 2007 USILA national poll. St. John's will face Lehigh away on Mar. 22 and will return to Queens to host to the Metro Atlantic Athletic League's top-finisher, Siena, in its only mid-week game on Tuesday, March 25. Closing out the month, the Red Storm will travel to Piscataway, N.J. to face-off against ECAC-foe Rutgers on Mar. 29. St. John's earned its first-ever ECAC victory against Rutgers, 6-4, at home on Mar. 31, 2007. The Scarlet Knights ended the season ranked 18th in the national poll with a 7-6 record.
In April, the Red Storm will face three league opponents at home, as St. John's hosts Massachusetts on Apr. 5 and Penn State on Apr. 12, before closing out its home-season with Fairfield on Apr. 26. Last season, St. John's was 4-1 at home for the season, and looks to carry over that success to 2008's April schedule. The lone April road game for the Red Storm will be in Geneva, N.Y., for an Apr. 19 match-up against Hobart.
"To be good, you have to beat good teams on the road. To play at Georgetown, Rutgers and Hobart will give us the opportunity to prove ourselves," said Miller. "At the same time, our March and April schedule is much better than a year ago because we get to face Loyola, Massachusetts, Penn State and Fairfield at St. John's all in a month's time."
The Red Storm will wrap up the 2008 regular season in Durham, N.C., with a May 4 non-conference contest against the 2007 NCAA runner-up, the Duke Blue Devils.
"Our team is excited about it," remarked Miller. "One of the great things about playing in the ECAC conference is you are playing the best team week in and week out. Hopefully, the opportunity to play Duke will be something our guys will be excited about, but not intimidated by, because we feel like we play great teams every weekend in the ECAC."
The meeting will be the sixth between the teams. When they last met, the Red Storm defeated the Blue Devils, 9-8, in overtime at home on Mar. 14, 1989. The Red Storm last played an NCAA runner-up team on April 7, 2007, when they lost 11-7 to ECAC opponent, Massachusetts.
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