Nine Goal First Half Leads No. 6 Army to Dominant Win Over St. Joe's

Saturday, February 27

West Point, NY

12 PM

Army West Point

2-1

Saint Joseph's University

0-3

SJU

Army

Nine Goal First Half Leads No. 6 Army to Dominant Win Over St. Joe's

February 27, 2021 | Men's Lacrosse

Box Score

WEST POINT, N.Y. – Behind a seven-point effort by Brendan Nichtern, the No. 6/7 Army West Point men's lacrosse team won its home opener with a 13-5 win over Saint Joseph's on Saturday afternoon at a foggy Michie Stadium.

HIGHLIGHTS

Saturday's win was Army's seventh consecutive home opening victory and second straight win this season.
Brendan Nichtern finished with four goals and three assists in the win, while the Black Knights saw Bobby Abshire and Alex Gekas find the back of the net twice.
Wyatt Schupler earned his second win of the season with 10 saves in 56 minutes of action.
Army outshot the Hawks, 42-37, and picked up a 29-27 advantage in ground balls.
Marcus Hudgins was essential on the defense, forcing a team high four caused turnovers.

The Black Knights dominated the first 30 minutes of the game and went into the half with a 9-1 advantage. Army was led by Nichtern, Abshire and Gekas in the opening half as Nichtern posted a goal and three assists, while Abshire and Gekas scored twice. The Black Knights led a collective offensive effort with seven different players tallying goals prior to the half and eight total on the day.

Saint Joseph's was able to get the first two goals of the second half with Ryan Doran and Shane Fable cutting the Army lead to 9-3 with 9:11 on the clock in the third quarter. The junior captain answered back with two scores to end the third period, securing his second consecutive seven point game on four goals and three assists, giving Army an 11-3 advantage.

The teams traded goals in the final quarter with Nichtern adding his fourth of the game and Nicholas Garofano tallying his first goal of the season between a couple of scores from Matt Bohmer of the Hawks.

Head Coach Joe Alberici's Thoughts: "A tremendous job by our guys today. Saint Joe's really had our respect, they lost a tough overtime game to Towson and scored 13 goals against a really good Delaware team, so they had our attention. We talked all week about the necessity of moving off of that Syracuse game and the quicker we did it the better we would be. We did some really good things, there were some guys who were outstanding - Marcus Hudgins is an elite defenseman and he had a tough assignment against number eight who had a day and a half against Delaware. I think Marcus had four caused turnovers, he was just awesome. The big piece is the first half they had twelve shots and one goal, we really just suffocated their offense. They had one of the very best faceoff guys in the country and our guy Stevie Grabher held his own. We didn't give up any transition there and the statistics look very lopsided towards St Joe's but that kid is probably the best faceoff guy in the country so we were really pleased there. It's hard in our sport to keep guys from shooting but it's about low angle shots, distance, and forcing them to shoot with their off hand so today was a tremendous effort on our guys part. Wyatt did his job by holding his pipe, getting some saves and helped us a lot in the clearing game by getting the ball up in a hurry - he turned in an All-American performance. It was a tough trip for St Joe's coming up the day of, but we felt like if we could just jump on them early and keep our foot on them then we'd be in great shape and the game played out as we'd hoped."

Up Next: The Black Knights return to action next Saturday at Boston University in the Patriot League opener with the opening faceoff coming at 2 p.m.