Ninth-Ranked Flames Hold Off Panthers in Rainy Midnight Matchup

It was a cold and rainy Saturday morning, but that did not stop the fans from cheering and the Flames from scoring. Liberty Men’s Lacrosse won their matchup with Pittsburgh 15-12 in a back-and-forth battle.

“Absolutely no disrespect to Pitt, but I thought that we didn’t play with a lot of passion, especially in that second half,” head coach Kyle McQuillan said. “I thought that we came out early and we got a good lead, and we knew that we could have success against these guys, but I don’t think we ever really put the pedal to the metal and kind of made a point to really kind of separate ourselves.”

Liberty got out to the early lead and held their ground for most of the game. Caleb Britton scored at 13:10 to get the scoring started early. He scored again less than a minute and a half later, and four times after that for a double hat-trick. Britton and Sam Gregory combined for 11 goals in total.

Mateo Zumpano scored two goals, and Carter Elliot and Derrick Esh rounded out the scoring as Liberty had five players who scored a goal. Other notable performances were Chase Wright tallying five assists and Austin Aguilar winning 18 of 25 faceoffs.

Liberty took a 5-1 lead with over four minutes left after Gregory netted his second goal of the contest, but Pittsburgh made it a 5-3 game by the end of the third. The Flames then took an 8-4 lead into halftime after Britton scored his fifth goal of the contest.

Each time Liberty was able to create a big lead, Pittsburgh battled back, but the Flames were able to fend them off.

“Ultimately, we’ve got to be able to play man-down,” McQuillan said. “I think they did a decent job of that tonight. As a whole, I thought the defense, where we lacked most of our consistency was just in transition. They were scoring left and right in transition, especially in the first half.”

Although Liberty was able to keep Pittsburgh’s power-play to a minimum, they had a hard time stopping Pittsburgh altogether, especially in the fourth quarter.

Liberty was able to push the game to 13-7 entering the fourth quarter, but they had a difficult time closing out the game. Esh scored early in the fourth quarter, only for Pittsburgh to score three straight goals in the fourth to make it a four-goal game. Gregory then scored Liberty’s final goal before Pittsburgh was able to put two late goals in the back of the net only to lose the game by three.

“Obviously a win is a win, but we want to play with a certain type of style, and it’s not necessarily about the wins all the time, it’s about how you play, and I thought tonight we didn’t execute in a lot of ways,” McQuillan said.

The momentum changed rapidly as the game moved along, both from the teams’ and fans’ perspectives.

“I think it all stemmed from getting that early lead and setting the tone early, and unfortunately we weren’t able to be consistent with that all night, but I thought we just kind of had spurts of moments where we would get a few quick goals here and kind of get some momentum,” McQuillan said.

 

Although the Flames came out on top, McQuillan said that he was not satisfied with the team’s performance and that they need to become more consistent in the future.

He said this week in practice they will focus on that and getting back into it mentally, as they will have a tough task ahead in their season finale. The ninth-ranked Flames will host No. 10 Virginia Tech on Friday to determine the top seed in the stacked SELC conference.