St. John's University Athletics
St. John's Hosts Quinnipiac In Saturday's Home-Opener
2/20/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Lacrosse
Feb. 20, 2009
QUEENS, N.Y. -The Red Storm men's lacrosse team faces the Quinnipiac Bobcats for the 2009 home-opener on Saturday at 1 p.m. on DaSilva Memorial Field.
The non-conference contest will be broadcast live for a fee on StormTracker All-Access via www.RedStormSports.com. Fans can follow all the action from the turf with the play-by-play called by Ralph Bednarczyk and color commentary by Matt Bernstein. Free live stats will also be available via GameTracker.
St. John's (1-0) is coming off a five-goal road victory at Holy Cross on Feb. 14. Quinnipiac (1-0) returns to the boroughs of New York City after defeating Wagner, 13-5, in Staten Island last Saturday.
Saturday's match up marks the first game of a three-contest home swing. After Quinnipiac, St. John's will host No. 9/8 Georgetown (Feb. 28) in the Red Storm's conference season-opener. The Drexel Dragons come to Queens on March 7 to finish out the home stint.
Last week's victory at Holy Cross marked the first road win of the Jason Miller Era. In two seasons, the Red Storm has posted a 8-19 overall record, with six wins at home and one against Siena on University of Albany's neutral turf on March 21, 2007.
The Series Against the Bobcats
Saturday's meeting is the third between the Quinnipiac Bobcats of the Great Western Lacrosse League and the Red Storm. The series is tied, with each team winning one on its own turf. Both games have gone down to the wire with one-goal decisions.
Quinnipiac won last season's, Feb. 25 outing 11-10 as Bobcat Garett Kerr capitalized on a Red Storm turnover and scored the game winning goal as the horn sounded at the Quinnipiac Lacrosse Field. Red Storm midfielder Trevor Michaelsen led the way for St. John's with five points (4G, 1A). Gavin Buckley stopped 11 of the Bobcats' 22 shots on goal.
The game, originally scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 23, had been postponed to Monday because of a icy storm that had blanked the East Coast.
In 2007, the Red Storm defeated the Bobcats, 9-8, at home on March 13. Michaelsen and his twin brother Tom combined for eight points with double hat tricks and two assists. St. John's opened with a four-goal lead before the Bobcats answered back with three uncontested goals. Quinnipiac had a chance to tie it up with 10 seconds left on the clock but goaltender Dan Goldberg stepped up and dodged the bullet as he muffed Griffin's shot to the right.
Last Time Out
Led by rookies Carl Iacona and Matt Hurst, the Red Storm got off to a winning start to its 2009 season with a 10-5 victory at Holy Cross. Iacona netted a hat trick while Hurst scored one with two assists. Fellow freshman Harry Kutner also posted two goals.
Holy Cross led off with two goals, but Kutner and Iacona tied it up to go into a 2-2 tie into the first period. The Red Storm had a one goal, 4-3, lead over the Crusaders going into half time and six unanswered goals in the third quarter gave St. John's the lift it needed to keep control of the game.
Holy Cross scored two in the fourth to try to make it a game but the seven-goal gap created in the third was too much for the Crusaders to overcome.
St. John's scored twice out of three man-up opportunities and cleared the ball 22 times on 22 attempts for a perfect percentage.
Senior captain Dom DeNapoli had a career day at the face-off X, winning 15-of-17 draws and shutting down six different Holy Cross competitors.
Hat Trick - Stats Of The Week
22: The Red Storm went 22-for-22 for a perfect clearing percentage against Holy Cross on Feb. 14
6: The number of face-off contenders senior Dom DeNapoli shut down on his way to his .882 percent face-off win percentage at Holy Cross on Feb. 14. DeNapoli went 15-for-17 in draws in the season-opener.
10: The number of goals the Red Storm scored on Holy Cross's senior goalie Jimmy Harrison. The 10 goals were the most scored in a St. John's season-opener since 2006. Ten is also the number of Red Storm players who earned a point in the contest.
Red Hot Rookies
It was the freshmen who led the way for St. John's in Saturday's 10-5 victory at Holy Cross. Rookie midfielder from Massapequa, N.Y., Carl Iacona netted his first career-hat trick to lead the Red Storm in scoring. Classmate and high school teammate Matt Hurst also tallied three points with a goal and two assists. Freshman Harry Kutner scored two of his own, making eight the rookie point-total for the contest.
Scouting the Quinnipiac Bobcats
The Bobcats scored 13 goals in its first game of the season against Wagner on Feb. 14. Jack Oppenheimer led the way for the Bobcats with five points off four assists and one goal. Ted Dimond scored a hat trick in the eight-goal victory. Mike Gast and Kelly also netted two, while Gary Messina had one goal and two assists for three goals.
Quinnipiac is coming off a successful 2008 season in which they qualified for the inaugural Great Western Lacrosse League Tournament and head coach Eric Fekete was named GWLL Coach of the Year. The Bobcats finished 8-5 (2-3 GWLL).
Junior goalie Kevin Benzing, who had 13 saves in last week's win in Staten Island, N.Y., returns to the net for the Bobcats after posting a .543 save percentage and 8.75 goals-against average last season. Benzing transferred to Quinnipiac after spending his freshman year at Drexel.
Messina, Dimond and Garett Kerr all return as leading scorers for the Bobcats. Messina led Quinnipiac with 26 points, including 10 goals and a team-high 16 assits last season. Dimond scored a team-high 17 goals, while Kerr added 16 goals.
In 2010, Quinnipiac will become one of the five new members of the ECAC Lacrosse League. The Bobcats make the move along with fellow GWLL members Air Force, Bellarmine, Denver and Ohio State and will join current ECAC members Fairfield, Hobart and Loyola (Md.) when the conferences realign next season and St. John's moves to the BIG EAST Conference.
On Deck
St. John's will host Georgetown on Feb. 28 for the first conference game of the season. Face-off is slated for 1 p.m. on DaSilva Memorial Field.
