March 27, 2005                                                                     

Event:  Men’s Lacrosse

Site: Ann Arbor, Michigan (Oosterbaan Fieldhouse)

Score: #5 Michigan 20, Florida 6

Records: UM (7-2, 1-0 CCLA), Florida (4-5, 1-0 SELC)

Next U-M Game: Friday, April 1, 7:00pm CST– vs. Texas (Austin, Texas – Whitaker Fields)

Wolverines Swamp the Gators

Event Recap I Boxscore I Notes & Quotes I Photos

Ann Arbor, Mich. – The University of Michigan men’s lacrosse team defeated Florida by a score of 20-6 in front of 209 fans in the final game of the Michigan Invitational on Sunday, March 27 at Oosterbaan Fieldhouse in Ann Arbor.  It didn’t take long for the Wolverines to jump out to an early lead, scoring the first six goals in the contest through a period and a half en-route to their third win on the weekend.

Freshman Evan Fox (Suffern, N.Y./Suffern) opened the scoring at the 12:20 mark of the first on a feed from fellow freshman Peter Krauss (Grand Rapids, Mich./Forest Hills Central) from behind the net.  Fox received the pass cleanly and fired a high shot just inside the right post.  The Wolverines extended their lead to 2-0 on Fox’s second goal of the game.  The goal was set up by junior midfielder Jim Constantine (Troy, Mich./Seaholm) who dodged into the zone, drew the defense to him and fed an open Fox at the top of the circle.

Michigan added two more goals before the quarter break, one from freshman attackman Bobby Morales (Bloomfield Hills, Mich./Brother Rice) who streaked in on the left side and buried a low shot.  The fourth and final goal of the period came from Fox, assisted by Morales, to give Michigan a 4-0 lead entering the second quarter. 

The Wolverines scored first again in the second quarter, on a shot from Mike O’Leary (St. Louis, MO./Clayton) from the right side with Fox getting his lone assist of the game.  Michigan didn’t slow up, scoring again just 20 seconds later at 13:47 on Fox’s fourth goal of the game. 

Leading 6-0, Michigan committed back-to-back penalties and found themselves in a two-man down situation with just over 10 minutes left in the first half.  Florida was able to convert on a goal from Blaine Patrick to cut the lead to 6-1. 

Florida returned the favor and committed their own duel penalties, with an illegal body-check and too many men on the field.  Michigan converted the man-up opportunity on a goal from Constantine who was assisted on the play by senior captain Ryan Clark (Summit, N.J./Summit) to rebuild their lead to 7-1. 

Constantine netted his second goal of the game at 4:07 on an assist from Clark to give Michigan the 8-1 lead.  Fox added another goal before the half, once again assisted by Clark before Florida notched the final two goals of the period on another extra-man tally by Ryan Pellarin and a transition goal by Craig Miller.  The teams entered the locker-room with Michigan leading by a score of 9-3.  

The Wolverines scored first coming out of the half, on Constantine’s third goal of the game.  The tally was assisted by senior captain Anthony Ragnone (Flint, Mich./Flint Powers).  Constantine added his fourth goal before Fox tallied his sixth, which was assisted by freshman Tom Lehman (Beverly Hills, Mich./Univ. of Detroit Jesuit).  

Florida answered 40 seconds later with back-to-back goals to cut the lead to 12-5.  It would be the closest the Gators would get for the remainder of the game as Michigan tallied four more unanswered goals before the period break and entered the final frame leading 16-5. 

The Maize and Blue were able to empty the bench in the final quarter with every Wolverine seeing the field.  Freshman attackman Doug Bell (Troy, Mich./Troy) notched his first career goal while fellow freshman, defenseman Nick Uhler (Pittsburgh, Penn./North Allegheny) recorded his first career point, an assist on the final goal of the game. 

Michigan dominated every statistic of the game, finishing with 47 shots, while Florida posted 16.   U-M scooped up 48 groundballs to the Gator’s 31, and finished with better clear numbers at 25-31 compared to Florida’s 16-28 totals.  Michigan was 6-11 on the man-up, while Florida finished 3-7.  In the faceoff circle, the Wolverines finished 19-30.  Senior goaltender Dan Webber (Weston, Mass./Weston) finished with two saves through three quarters of play, while sophomore Ryan Kaufman (Olney, Md./Magruder) posted three saves in his quarter of play. 

The Wolverines will be traveling to the Lone-Star state to take on Texas on Friday and Texas A&M on Saturday.  Please visit MGoBlue.com for a complete schedule. 

NOTES

●  Senior long-stick midfielder Dave Silverman (Potomac, Md./Churchill), the team’s leading groundball man last year with 106, paced the squad again vs. Florida, finishing with nine.  His total through nine games this year is 64.

●  The team's leading point-man in ’05, freshman attackman Evan Fox (Suffern, N.Y./Suffern) finished with a career high in goals and points with 7-1-8 totals to extend his point total to 26-13-39.  His previous high was a three goal, three assist effort vs. Missouri in the season opener.

●  Ryan Clark continued to work his way back into the line-up on Saturday after struggling through a knee injury earlier in the season.  Clark finished with a season-high five assists and 1-5-6 totals.  With 10 points in his last two games (2-2-4 vs. Oregon), Clark currently sits in second place with 10-13-23 totals.

●  After missing the first five games of the regular season, Jim Constantine has recorded a point in every game since his return and exploded for a career high in goals and points vs. Florida, posting 4-2-6.  Constantine also recorded a career-high eight shots.

●  The last time the Wolverines scored at least 20 goals was vs. Central Florida in the season opener of 2004 when U-M scored 24 goals en-route to a 24-0 victory.

QUOTES

U-M Head Coach John Paul

On the game itself:  “After the Oregon game and going back and watching the film on that it was pretty apparent we just weren’t finishing in that game, we had opportunities to put it away and didn’t.  That was our focus today, to finish.  We had opportunities both nights, but tonight we finished, that was the difference.  Fox is a great example, he had seven goals today and he shot very well, and last night he missed a ton of opportunities that he’s been hitting all year.”

On the offense in general: “We’re good when we’re moving and the ball is moving and today we were setting up our offense a little better with some nice dodges which is something we’ve been struggling with a little in the past two weeks.  We did a much better job finding the open guy on the weak-side of the defense.”

On the defense: “I thought we did well defensively.  In the first half their only goals came on the man-up and transition.  They did a nice job shooting on their man-up. But I thought overall our defense played pretty well today.  Looking back at last night I felt we played pretty well.  Oregon was just on offensively.”

On getting everyone in:  “With young guys like that…We just tell those guys, don’t expect to be perfect, but what we don’t want to see is a total mess.  We want them to get in there and show that they’re capable and not panicking out there.  Today they did that.  They played pretty solid defense and guys did a nice job on offense.  They were composed, and that’s what we want to see.”

On next weekend in Texas:  “We’ll be thin as we have some injuries, and we’re just taking a smaller travel squad, and in that sense it will be a little different for us.  And we’re also in and out.  It’s not like a long spring trip.  Its kind of like a business trip.  I hate to use that sports analogy but its true.  We only have two days of practice this week after playing three games in a row.  We still have some things to work on like we will all season.  I think some things were exposed this weekend but hopefully we’ll be one week better when we play this weekend.”

Freshman Attackman Evan Fox

On the game itself:  “I think we came out firing from the beginning.  I think we were a little disappointed about last night and it showed in the start tonight.  We knew we needed to come out strong.”

On his seven-goal performance:  “Last night personally, I had a terrible shooting performance and it really bothered me.  I was trying to pick too many corners last night instead of just shooting where the goalie wasn’t.  Today I wasn’t trying to be so picky and just trying to go for open spaces instead of top corner every time.”

Senior Long-Stick Midfielder David Silverman

On the play of the entire team:  “It was really good to come out here and play like we did after yesterday.  I think we had a real emotional let-down yesterday.  But tonight we came out really fired up and it was also nice to see the younger guys and the substitutes get out there and keep up the pressure and doing basically as well as we could.”

On winning the hypothetical finals:  “We like to see it as that type of thing were we come out on Friday and it’s the quarters, and last night was the semis, and the finals today.  What we really want to do is come out and keep up the intensity and picking it up every single night.  Its tough to do that when you’re tired on the third day, but we found a way to pick it up and get the job done.” 

Senior Goaltender Dan Webber

On the offensive support tonight:   “Our offense really did it for us tonight.  With 20 goals you can’t really argue with that.  They really got the job done.  I think the defense let down a little bit, but it happens and there are those type of games.”

On staying emotionally charged after the OT finish last night:  “I know tonight was our “championship” but last night was so close and so intense it felt like one.  We were expecting to win a little more handily last night, but a win is a win and we were definitely fortunate to pick it up.  We had a little chip on our shoulders this afternoon though.”

Contact: Joe Hennessy (734) 276-8493, jjhennes@umich.edu