The Liberty men’s lacrosse team has had itself another dominant season. The team ended its 14-game regular season with 12 wins and just two losses, which slots them in first place in the ALC North. This Flames unit was an all-around powerhouse, scoring an average of 13.6 goals per game and allowing just 8.2 opposing goals per game.
In any sport, and certainly lacrosse, a litany of variables factor into a dominant score differential like the Flames’. A good defense, solid goaltending, communication, quality coaching and overall chemistry are all important, but nothing is more crucial than the ability to find the back of the net, and there is none better at doing so than the six members of the Flames’ starting offensive unit.
Those six players, who lead one of the best offenses in the nation, make up a unit nicknamed The Sinister Six.
“I think if you look at any other team in the MCLA or any other level of lacrosse, it’s usually three guys who are predominantly (a team’s) scorers, and it’s not very distributed around their offensive players,” junior midfielder and member of the Sinister Six Keaton Mohs said. “But I feel like with this six, this group, everybody does their fair share of scoring, and (if) one person’s off one night, you can just rely on the other to be on.”
Mohs, along with graduate student and fellow midfielder Cam Carter, teams up with an absolute lethal group of attackmen to fill out the rest of The Six. Those attackmen are sophomore Will Geary, junior Braden Landry and the Branham brothers Luke and Cooper, who are a freshman and senior respectively.
“Ever since we got together in the fall, we knew we had a dynamic standpoint just from every position,” Geary said. “We knew all of us had the ability to score. We all compensate each other really well, which is kind of why we’ve been doing so well this season. We have guys who are on crease finishers and guys who can take shots from outside, and we just have athletes who can play, which is kind of our biggest advantage.”
That ability to compensate for each other, building on each other’s strengths and minimizing each other’s weaknesses is one of the keys to this group’s successes. Each of The Six plays a different role on the field, similar to that of a starting five on a basketball team.
“I think this year all the pieces fell in together,” Mohs said. “Like, we have Will, who’s just a downhill dodger, a big strong force, gets through the alley, gets where he wants to get. We have Cam, who’s the same way, just left-handed. And I think that’s played to my advantage because I’m a predominantly right-handed player and I like to go side to side before I pick a way to go and read my defender. So, I’m able to go off of those guys, and they’re just such big, strong athletes that I can react off of them and be able to play creative off of that. And because they have to respect Coop from range, which makes it easier for all of us to try to get in closer to the net and have our inside finishes. And with Luke being a big body at X and being able to work off ball, and with Brayden being a lefty on that left wing, being able to creep around back door and find him on crease has been it’s all like a puzzle, and all the pieces have fit together.”
Carter, the eldest of the group, plays a point guard-type role, focusing more on distributing then scoring.
“I think playing with them, it’s just awesome,” Carter said. “Honestly, I think all of us do a great job of just, like, knowing where we want to be. Especially for me, I love to distribute and just feed (the other guys), and so when I’m dodging or whatever, I look to go to Keaton or Will or Cooper on a step down.”
Carter is tied for second on the Flames in assists this season with 18, which ties him with the other middie on The Six, Keaton Mohs, who also has a point guard-esque game. His lightning quick movements and incredible stick handling, paired with some out-of-this-world acrobatics, make Mohs one of the hardest players to guard in the MCLA.
Along Mohs and Carter is the one-two punch of Landry and Geary. Geary, being a player who plays with no fear of physicality, has a way of punching his way into the center of an opposing defense and driving to the crease. Landry, in contrast, uses his speed create easy opportunities on cuts and dives towards the net.
“Yeah, in my case, I’m not the biggest guy on the field, so I’m definitely not going to beat some of the bigger, faster defenders,” Landry said. “And Coop does that for me, Keaton does that for us, Will does it too. … When Keaton goes to X, my whole job is just to read what he does and kind of follow him and mirror him doing whatever he’s doing. And that just allows everybody else up top to run picks and cut and they don’t have to worry about who’s going to get chased or whatever because I’ve taken responsibility of that part during those parts of the play.”
The last two members of The Sinister Six are the Branham brothers. Luke Branham, who is just one of two of The Six to not have been on the team last season, has quickly found his place in this group, and in this lineup especially.
“I’m just grateful (that I get to play with five guys this talented),” Luke said. “This season, I really haven’t had to do too much besides just play my position. With these guys, it’s about playing your role and not doing too much. You usually have a better game when you try to take on less. You reap the benefits when other people are playing well, and it’s so cool to see who will have a great game every game day, who will pop off. It’s a lot of fun.”
Cooper, who has tallied the 10th-most points in the entirety of the MCLA this season with 59 and 13th-most goals in the season with 37, is the big gun for the Flames. His ability to rip a step-down from 15 feet away with pinpoint accuracy, paired with his excellent stick-handling and his knack for finding the open man, makes him a challenge for even the best defenders in the country.
“It’s awesome having someone like Cooper to lean on,” Geary said. “When we need a goal, he’s got a great shot and be able to give him the ball and be able to see him put up a shot and having that literally like a 70% chance of it going in, and you just know he’s getting everyone fired up. It’s been awesome getting to play with him the last two years.”
“The Sinister Six,” Cooper said. “Yeah, that’s pretty cool. We were doing some film the other week, and we were scouting one of the teams that we were playing, and we only really had to look at their top two players because that’s all they had. And they showed us our stats for our top seven players, and a bunch of people had points. So, I think that’s a scary thing to look at if you’re scouting us. We’ve got weapons up and down the list, so you got to prepare for all of us.”
Palsgrove is the asst. sports editor for the Liberty Champion. Follow him on Twitter
