(May 13)-Someone said the third time's a charm. Whoever it was, they were right. Brigham Young defeated Colorado State for the USLIA National Championship, 17-13, in their third meeting this season. This was BYU’s second National Championship in four trips.
The Cougars lost their previous two games against the Rams this year, the last one by a goal in the Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Lacrosse League Championship on May 1.
“I told the team that [Colorado State] was the [RMILL] champion but we could be the National Champions,” said Cougar coach Jason Lamb. “It’s rewarding to beat a team that’s had your number two times.”
BYU was planning for another rematch with the Rams ever since that conference loss two weeks ago. “We retooled our defense for Colorado [State],” said midfielder Troy Taylor who had five goals and two assists. “They like to feed into the middle so we packed it in.”
Lamb agreed. “After that one goal loss we met and started working on our defense. The number one difference between that game and this one was our defense. That’s all we’ve been talking about.”
The Cougars weren’t too bad offensively either.
Along with Taylor’s seven points, Mike Austin and Dan Murdock each had three goals. Rex Hardy, Dave Rueckert and Thomas Hawes each added two for BYU. The Cougars offensive explosion was not a surprise, but Taylor’s contribution was.
Coming into today’s championship, Taylor had 5 goals and one assist in the tournament (three games).
“I was more assertive today,” Taylor said. ‘I was a bit tentative this week but I decided I was going to go to the goal today. Their goalie was great on the low shots so I wanted to go in and shoot high on him.”
It worked against Colorado State goalie Ty Wilson, who had an incredible game otherwise. He made 21 saves, several of which were from point blank range. The game could have easily been a blowout without Wilson’s heroics.
“He should be the tournament MVP,” said BYU goalie Dave Johnson who had 13 saves. “He was incredible.”
Colorado State took the opening quarter 3-2 but fell apart in the second. The Cougars outscored the Rams 6-2 in that stanza, which ultimately proved to be the difference in the game. Taylor and Dave Rueckert scored five of the six goals in the run.
BYU was up 15-9 with 10:56 left in the game before the Rams made the game interesting. Mike Roth (5 goals, 2 assists) scored two goals 28 seconds apart and Mike Napolilli (3,3) added one to cut the lead to 15-12 with 6:12 remaining. Colorado State traded goals with the Cougars and was still down three with just under three minutes left when their luck ran out.
CSU missed some one on one shots with Johnson, dropped easy passes and turned the ball over, thus ending their chances of a comeback. BYU’s Thomas Hawes (2,0) added an insurance goal with 23 seconds left to seal the win.