March 14, 2024 • 37 mins
Welcome to Navy Sports Central - The Official Podcast of the Navy Sports Nation!
Today, we're going to jump into the Navy Sports Central time machine and revisit the 2004 Navy Men's Lacrosse team's unforgettable season. This year marks the 20th anniversary of their magical run to the Final Four. And in our Deep Dive segment, you will learn how they bounced back from a disappointing year in 2003 to wind up on the brink of a national championship.
I'll be discussing the key players and highlight three regular season games that shaped this team into one the best that Navy has ever put on the field. Then I'll take you through that heart-stopping win over Princeton in the semifinal, and the classic championship game where the Mids came up agonizingly short against Syracuse.
This was an inspiring team, whose commitment and dedication captured the hearts of college lacrosse fans across the nation. So come along and enjoy the ride with me!
Related Links:
- Navy Track & Field Sweeps the Patriot League Championships
- Navy Men's and Women's Swimming & Diving Teams Repeat as Patriot League Champions
- 2004 Navy Men's Lacrosse Statistics
We want your answer to our Question of the Day. Here is the one for this episode:
As of today, there are 9 Navy Men's Lacrosse players who have over 150 points in their careers. How many of them played on the 2004 team that made it to the NCAA Championship game?
A.) 1
B.) 2
C.) 3
D.) 4
You can give us your answer on the Navy Sports Nation Group Facebook page.
Follow Navy Sports Central wherever you get your podcasts:
Check out the Navy Sports Nation group page on Facebook!
Music is provided courtesy of Audio Jungle. Artists featured in order:
- Seven In Music (Intro)
- Alexiaction (Deep Dive)
- Loka Music (Question of the Day Lead In)
- Cinematic Alex (Closeout Music)
You can click on the hyperlink above to make a $1 donation through Cash App if you like what you hear. You can also support the Mids and the show at the same time. Navy Sports Central is a proud affiliate partner of Fanatics.com, the Ultimate Fan Gear Store! Click on the link to start shopping now!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Karl (00:14):
Hi everybody, my name is Karl Darden and I'd like to
welcome and thank all of you forjoining us today on Navy Sports
Central.
I'm your host, and this is theofficial podcast of the Navy
Sports Nation, where we take adeeper dive into Navy sports.
It isn't quite officiallyspring time in Annapolis, but it
might as well be, since all thespring sports teams are solid
three to four weeks into theirseasons.
In our update, I'll get youcaught up on how the winter
sports finished, which includedpicking up four more Patriot
(00:36):
League championships, and you'llbe meeting the two athletes who
will be tracking in ourmid-watch segments over the next
few months.
Finally, in our deep divesegment, we're going to go back
20 years and revisit thatincredible run that the 2004
Navy Men's Cross Team had thatput them right on the doorstep
of winning their nationalchampionship.
That was one very special teamand I will do my level best to
tell their story, so stickaround.
All right, it is great to haveyou with us today on Navy Sports
(01:08):
Central, whether you are aregular listener or this is your
first visit.
Thanks for taking the time.
Now we're going to go ahead andjump right into things with our
sports update and with ourwinter teams finishing up their
seasons, I've got quite a bit topass along, so let's get
started with men's basketball.
On balance, I would say theteam came out right about where
I expected this year.
They definitely had the talentto get about nine or ten wins in
(01:30):
the Patriot League, but I felt,because they were a young team,
closing out some games might bean issue, and it turns out that
they finished seven and nine,eight and ten if you include the
tournament results.
But two of those losses wereagainst Loyola, who the Mids
beat in the tournament, and alsoto Army in overtime.
So the team was that close togoing nine and seven instead of
the other way around.
(01:51):
But overall I like where theyare as we look ahead to the next
couple of years.
There are a lot ofunderclassmen that got quality
minutes this year.
Besides Austin Benigni, whowe've been tracking in our
midwatch segment, we've gotDonovan Draper, another
sophomore, who was a second onthe team in scoring with nine
and a half points a game, and hewas also the team's leading
rebounder with just over nineper contest.
(02:11):
And then you had a couple ofjuniors, Lysander Rehnstrom and
also Mac McDonald, who were theMids two most consistent
shooters from beyond the arc.
So with this bunch ofexperienced underclassmen coming
back, I'm looking forward toseeing if the Mids can get a
little bit deeper into thePatriot League tournament next
year.
As far as the women's team goes,I thought they had a remarkable
(02:32):
season.
Remember the Mids just had onewin last year, going one and 29,
so that had to be really,really tough.
But Coach Taylor acknowledgedhow important the seniors
Morganne Andrews, Sam Schofieldand Sydne Watts were in getting
things turned around.
They stayed positive throughall that adversity last year and
, even though they had a littlebit more of a supporting role
this season, they were alwaysready to play and contribute
(02:53):
when their number was called.
And of course, the two playerslargely responsible for the
Mids' huge improvement were acouple of freshmen.
Zanai Barnett- Gay was selectedas the Patriot League rookie of
the year in what had to be oneof the easiest decisions ever
made in that category and on topof that her backcourt made Kyah
Smith joined Barnett- Gay onthe All Rookie team.
The Mids ended up going 9-9 inthe Patriot League and they had
(03:13):
a solid 11-6 record at AlumniHall.
And they had a real shot atbeating number two Colgate in
the quarterfinals of the PatriotLeague tournament, but the
Raiders experience proved to bethe difference in the end.
Just like the men, though, thewomen had a lot of young
players get some quality minutes, so I'm looking for them to get
a little bit further into thetournament next year.
Now let's move on to wrestling,where the EIWA tournament was
(03:34):
just completed.
Last year, coach Colott sentfive wrestlers to the NCAA
championships and he was lookingto at least match that number
this season.
Not only did he do that, butNavy has another regional
champion at 141 pounds in JoshKoderhandt.
In the final he took on DylanChappelle from Bucknell
University.
After neither wrestler got onthe board in the first period,
chappelle scored an escape inthe second to go up 1-0.
(03:56):
Koderhandt came back with atake down midway through the
period and then scored a fourpoint near fall to gain a 7-1
advantage.
And he picked up four morepoints on an escape and another
take down in the third period,and then he got the riding time
point to win the title match bya 12-2 major decision.
The other four wrestlers goingto the NCAA tournament besides
Koderhandt will be AndrewCerniglia at 165 pounds, Danny
(04:17):
Wask at 174, David Key at 184and Grady Griess in the
heavyweight division.
Okay.
Next up we have the Rifle team,which capped off an outstanding
year by finishing sixth in theNCAA championships that just
wrapped up.
The top finisher for the midswas Senior Clarissa Layland, who
led the team with 1179 points.
Sophomore Marleigh Duncan wasright behind her with 1175, and
(04:41):
rounding out the top five forthe mids were Isabella Baldwin,
Deontae Hayes and StephanieMilvain.
This was a record setting yearfor the Rifle team.
They broke the program's teamscoring mark in all three
categories, which are small bore, air rifle and then overall,
and they surpassed 4,700 pointsnine times.
And, by the way, that sixthplace finish at the NCAA
championships was one betterthan their seeding.
(05:03):
They were actually seventhgoing in.
So great job to coach Ante andhis team.
The next two teams we're goingto take a look at are men's and
women's track and field, and themain thing to report there is
that both of them repeated asPatriot League champions, which
I don't think was a hugesurprise to anybody.
So what I'm going to do now isjust go through all the
individual winners.
We'll start with the men.
(05:24):
First off we have Brahmir Vick,who won both the 60 meter dash
and also the 60 meter hurdles.
Nathan Kent also picked up acouple of wins.
He won the 200 and 400 meterdash and Murphy Smith picked up
a win in the 5,000 meter run.
Navy also had two relay teamsfinish first, the four by 400
meter relay team of Nathan Kent,David Walker, Jay Evans and
(05:46):
Jacques Guillaume set a meetrecord, and they were also
joined by the distance medleyrelay team of Luke Nester,
Jayshon Dubose, Carson Sloat andMatt Newell.
On the field events, JoshBoamah picked up wins in both
the weight throw and the shotput, walker Rudisaile won the
pole vault and Jordan Payne cameout on top in the triple jump.
On the women's side, yourwinners were Sophia Richter in
(06:08):
the 400 meters, Gia Anderson inthe 60 meter hurdles, Elena
Schroeder picked up a win in thepole vault and Annie Taylor won
the indoor heptathlon.
The women also won two relays.
The four by 800 meter relay waswon by Alex Wersinski, Mckenna
Brophy, Kayla McGuire and EllieAbraham, and then Wersinski and
Abraham teamed with KatelynPepin and Annie Taylor to win
(06:30):
the distance medley.
And, by the way, that was thefifth straight Patriot League
championship for both the menand the women.
The men's and women's swimmingand diving teams also repeated
as Patriot League champions, soI'm really glad I didn't jinx
them by having coach Roberts andcoach Morrison on before they
took place.
The women went in fairlycomfortable fashion, but the men
did have to battle army intothe third day and it was
(06:51):
actually the divers who gavethem the separation they needed
to win the meet.
Finn Gelbach, George Moore andBlake Shaw swept the three meter
event, which meant that themids four by 400 relay team just
needed to finish the race toclaim the title.
Instead, they went out and wonit anyway, setting a meet record
in the process.
And in case any of you arekeeping score out there, that
makes it 12th straight PatriotLeague championships for the
(07:12):
women and 22 overall, which is arecord.
Meanwhile, the men ran theirstreak of consecutive
championships to 20 without aloss.
All right, our sports update iscomplete and coming up next we
have our deep dive segment,which you do not want to miss, I
(07:40):
think.
For Navy La Crosse fans, 2004has to rank as one of the most
memorable years in the historyof the program.
The team the mids put on thefield that spring was extremely
talented and they possessed thekind of chemistry that every
coach dreams of.
But I think it's fair to saythat not too many people, even
diehard Navy fans, could havepredicted what happened that
year.
So, to set things up, I thinkit's best to take a quick look
(08:02):
and see how the 2003 seasonfinished up.
Richie Mead was entering hisninth season as Navy's head
coach.
That year, the mids had puttogether back-to-back eight and
five seasons in 2001 and 2002 asmembers of the East Coast
Athletic Conference, and theywere looking to build on that so
they could punch their ticketto the NCAA tournament.
It had been four years sincethey last qualified, having lost
in the first round in 1999.
(08:24):
The 2003 didn't go as expected.
The mids got off to a faststart by winning their first
three games, and two of thosewere against ranked opponents
number 19 Ohio State and number9 North Carolina.
After that they dropped five oftheir next six, and four of
those losses came to teamsranked in the top 15.
Going into their final game ofthe season against 16th ranked
Army, navy was sitting on a fiveand seven record and any hope
(08:44):
of picking up a bid to the NCAAtournament was long gone.
Now they did pull thingstogether and beat the Black
Knights 12-11 to finish the yearat six and seven.
That salvaged what many Navyfans viewed as a disappointing
season and no doubt there'd be alot of questions in 2004.
The mids were joining the newlyformed Patriot League and Coach
Mead was heading into his tenthseason with only one NCAA
appearance.
(09:05):
But I think the biggestquestion on every Navy fans mind
was could this team, whichlooked pretty good on paper,
figure out a way to winconsistently?
Nobody really knew for sure.
So let's go ahead and take alook at that 2004 roster.
The first thing you notice isthat it wasn't a team that was
loaded with seniors.
In fact, there were just eighton the 44 man squad and only
(09:26):
three of them were in thestarting lineup.
But those guys were exceptionalplayers and they were
surrounded by some outstandingunderclassmen.
So before we get into some ofthe season's key games, I wanted
to talk about a handful ofplayers who played such a
critical role in the team'ssuccess, and we'll go ahead and
start with the attackman.
First up we have Ian Dingman.
He was a sophomore and, at 6'3", 248 pounds, he was a
(09:49):
defenseman's nightmare whetherhe was on the move or parked in
front of the crease.
In 2003, dingman was second onthe team in goals with 17 and in
points with 24.
Those were pretty decentnumbers for a freshman, but, as
Navy fans were about to find out, he was just getting started.
A big key to Navy's attack wasSenior Joe Bossi.
He was from Skaneateles, NewYork, which was about 22 miles
(10:11):
southwest of Syracuse.
Bossi put up 17 points in 2003,on 12 goals and five assists,
and that was just a drop in thebucket compared to what he did
in 2004.
Next we have John Birsner fromLevittown, new York.
He was another sophomore andput up some decent numbers as a
freshman, also with nine goalsand nine assists, but again,
this would prove to be anothercase of you ain't seen nothing
(10:33):
yet, because in 2004, Birsnerwould team up with Dingman and
Bossy to form an attack linethat produced 151 points.
Navy also had some great scoreson their midfield line.
Junior Graham Gill was comingoff a 21 point season which
consisted of 13 goals and eightassists.
He would add another 10 goalsand two assists to that total in
2004.
Senior Ben Bailey was fromMemphis, TN, where lacrosse was
(10:56):
just starting to catch on At thetime.
There are only 20 programs inthe entire state.
Bailey was clearly one of thebetter players, though, because
he put up 14 goals for the midsduring his junior year and, just
like everyone else I'vementioned so far, he improved on
those numbers significantly in2004.
Finally, I did want to mentionthe Looney brothers, Brendan,
Steve and Bill.
Brendan came to Navy tooriginally to play football, and
(11:17):
then he ended up transitioningto lacrosse so he could be on
the field with his brothers.
His brother, Steve, was asophomore, and Bill was an
incoming freshman.
As part of the Mids' newrecruiting class.
They were both double-digitpoint producers in 2004,
combining for 43 altogether.
Navy's interior defense was ledby senior Jared Bosanko and a
couple of juniors, Mike Felberand Mitch Hendler.
The goalkeeper was a sophomoreby the name of Matt Russell.
(11:40):
These four guys were a bigreason why the Mids only gave up
an average of seven goals pergame, and when the defense is
put into clamps on opposingoffenses like that, you're gonna
pick up quite a few wins.
Okay, those are some of theplayers you'll be hearing about
as we continue, and there willbe others that I bring up as we
talk about what I consider to bethree key games that shape
Navy's season.
The first of these was againstNorth Carolina.
(12:01):
Navy had beaten the Tar Heels9-8 at home in 2003, but trying
to repeat that result in ChapelHill was not going to be easy.
The Mids were unranked and cameinto the game with a 1-1 record
.
They beat Marist 14-1 to openthe season and then lost the
following week to Ohio State12-9.
Unc was ranked fourth in thecountry and was looking to get
back to the NCAA tournamentafter missing out in 2003.
(12:22):
The Tar Heels struck first on anunassisted goal to make the
score 1-0 just 5 minutes intothe game, and then 7 seconds
later, the score was tied.
The Mids controlled the faceoff and Brendan Looney came up
with the ground ball.
He quickly found Dingman in thefront of the crease and the big
man buried the shot to get theMids on the board.
Each team scored once morebefore the end of the quarter,
bringing the count to two goalsapiece.
And, by the way, pay attentionto Navy's ability to score
(12:45):
quickly after giving up a goal.
You can hear that more than afew times as we go through these
games.
In the second quarter, the Midsstrung together back to back
goals.
Graham Gill got the first oneand then, 60 seconds later,
senior Midfielder Matt Madurafollowed that up with one of his
own.
North Carolina did get one ofthose back a little bit later
and the Mids took a 4-3 leadinto the locker room at halftime
.
Two minutes into the thirdquarter, graham Gill picked up
(13:06):
his second goal of the game andwith the Mids up by two, the
defense is settled in andcontrolled the next 10 minutes.
Then the Navy offense tookadvantage of a transition
opportunity when juniordefensive midfielder Clipper
Lennon found Dingman for hissecond goal to the contest.
Two more goals were scored inthe next 46 seconds, one by each
team.
First the UNC climbed backwithin two goals 40 seconds
after Dingman scored and then onthe following draw, the Mids'
(13:29):
faceoff specialist Chris Posankagot control and sprinted down
the field on a fast break.
He scored unassisted to givethe Mids a 7-4 lead just six
seconds into the fourth quarter.
But the Tar Heels just wouldnot go away.
They strung together threeconsecutive goals to tie the
score.
With 8.5 minutes to go in thegame.
Posanka won the next draw andSteve Looney scooped up the
ground ball on the wing.
Meanwhile, posanka just keptrunning towards the goal.
(13:49):
Looney hit him with a perfectpass and he fired it past the
UNC goalkeeper to put the Midsup 8-7.
It stayed that way untilCarolina tied the score again
with about a minute and a halfto go, and then neither team
could score the game winnerbefore time ran out.
So they went to a 5 minuteovertime and just about halfway
through Clipper Lennon came upwith the ball on another
transition opportunity.
This time he took it to thecage himself and found the back
(14:11):
of the net to give the Mids ahuge 9-8 overtime win.
Lennon finished the game withthree points on two goals and
one assist, while Dingman, galeand Posanka also had two goals
each.
On defense, coach Meade had alot of good things to say about
sophomore Matt Russell'sperformance and goal.
It was his very first start andhe came up with 12 saves to
help nail down the win.
Taking down the number fourranked Tar Heels gave the Mids a
(14:32):
huge boost.
They were playing with a lot ofconfidence and they won their
next three games handily by acombined score of 45-19.
So by the end of March theywere sitting on a 5-1 record.
As they traveled up the WestPoint to take on Army, the Black
Knights qualified for the NCAATournament in 2003 and they had
every intention of going back.
A win over the Mids would go along way towards them achieving
(14:53):
that goal.
Both teams really came outswinging to start the game.
Dingman and Birsner helpedstake the Mids to a 4-1 lead,
but Armin rung up three goals ina row to tie the score in the
last few minutes of the quarter.
Then Graham Gill picked up hissecond goal to retake the lead,
and that's when the floodgatesopened.
The Navy offense went crazy,scoring seven consecutive goals
to close out the half, and theirdefense shut Armin out
(15:16):
completely.
In the second quarter, the midscontinued adding to their lead
with three more scores early inthe third to go up 14-4, before
the Black Knights finallymanaged to stop the bleeding
with one goal.
Navy answered with two morelate in the third, followed by
two more in the fourth, and thatpretty much did it.
Armin did tack on a handful ofgarbage goals at the end, but
when the horn sounded they wereon the wrong end of an 18-10
(15:36):
beatdown.
Dingman and Burschner led thescoring barrage with three goals
and three assists each.
That's basically a hat trick ongoal to hand assists.
And then Joe Bossi added a hattrick of his own plus an assist.
Graham Gill had a couple ofgoals and one assist himself.
It was a truly dominantperformance against a pretty
good Army team, and the onething people began to realize
was that Navy could beat teamsin any number of different ways.
(15:57):
Usually, when opponents tookthe field against them, they
figured out being involved in areal slugfest and a pretty low
scoring game.
But this team was different.
There was a lot more flow totheir offense and any attackmen
or midfielder they had out therewas a threat to score.
That made them very, verydangerous.
And two weeks after beatingArmy, the best team in the
country found out just howdangerous Navy really was.
(16:21):
The University of Maryland hadone of the elite college
lacrosse programs in all ofDivision I, and that goes for
both the men and the women.
The Terrapins had a standingreservation at the NCAA
tournament every year, it seemed.
In 2003, they made it to theFinal Four before they were
beaten by the University ofVirginia, who went on to defeat
Johns Hopkins in the title game.
Now, by the middle of the 2004season, the Terps are undefeated
(16:42):
at 8-0 and ranked number one inthe country.
The week prior to welcomingNavy to College Park, they had
smoked defending championVirginia 11-2, so they were
feeling pretty confident thatthey could keep their unbeaten
streak going.
The Mids thought otherwise.
Joe Bossi and Ben Bailey gotthe offense going early with a
goal apiece, putting them up 2-0.
Maryland cut the lead to 1 onan unassisted goal, but the Mids
(17:02):
came right back thanks toBossi's quick reaction.
Team-mate Adam Real took a shotthat the Maryland goalkeeper
couldn't quite control and Bossiquickly scooped up the rebound
and jammed it past him to givethe Mids a 3-1 lead.
The team's traded scores beforethe Terps tied the game with
back-to-back goals.
The second one came when Navywas two men down.
Right before the half JohnBursner scored off and assist by
Clipper Lennon.
So going into halftime the Midshad a one-goal lead.
(17:24):
The only problem was there werestill 30 minutes of lacrosse
left to play.
Maryland didn't waste any timeat all tying the game coming out
of the locker room.
They scored just a minute intothe second half, but with just
under 5 minutes to go in thequarter the Navy offense scored
four consecutive goals that takea 9-5 lead.
He got things started when hefired in a shot underhanded on a
man-up opportunity.
(17:44):
And then Gill got the next oneby catching a missed shot by
John Bursner on the run and heput it past the goalie before he
could get his bearings.
Finally, dingman picked up thelast two goals, which are his
team leading 22nd and 23rd ofthe season.
The defense did the rest andthe Mids walked off the field
with the program defining 9-6win.
It was their first ever againsta top-ranked team.
From there, navy pretty muchrolled through the rest of the
(18:06):
season.
They finished undefeated in thePatriot League and the only
game they dropped the rest ofthe way was a 10-9 decision to
Johns Hopkins.
But despite that, the team hadfound the chemistry that was
missing in 2003.
And after winning the PatriotLeague championship, the Mids
received an automatic bid to theNCAA tournament.
Okay, we're going to go aheadand take a short break now, but
before we do that, I did want togive you all a couple of ways
(18:27):
to stay up to date on NavySports.
The first is to join the NavySports Nation group Facebook
page.
I've got a link to that in theshow notes.
Just click on it, answer acouple of questions and you'll
be good to go.
The second way takes even lesstime.
Just hit the follow button.
On whichever platform you'relistening to this podcast right
now.
It can be Apple Podcasts,spotify, iheart Radio, it
(18:48):
doesn't matter.
Once you do that, every episodewill be downloaded to your
directory when it's released andyou can listen to it whenever
you're ready.
So please consider becoming amember of our group and you can
actually tap that follow buttonright now to show your support
for the podcast.
I'm looking forward to havingyou join us.
We'll be right back.
Thanks for staying with us onNavy Sports Central, Karl Darden
(19:21):
here with you, and today we arecelebrating the 2004 Men's
Lacrosse team.
20 years ago, they put togethera season Navy fans will never
forget, and they came within aneyelash of winning the national
championship.
We left off before the break,with the Mids having earned a
trip to the NCAA tournamentafter winning the Patriot League
title In the first round.
They faced the University ofPennsylvania in Annapolis on
(19:43):
what turned out to be a veryhumid afternoon.
In fact, neither team wasparticularly sharp early, but
the Navy offense finally settledin halfway through the second
quarter and took a 4-1 lead atthe half, after the Quakers made
it 4-2 early.
In the third, joe Bossi justtook over.
He scored 3 goals in less than4 minutes to put the Mids up 7-2
, and from there they cruised toan 11-5 win.
(20:05):
Bossi finished with 4 goals andDingman and Gill had 2 apiece.
And the Navy defense playedextremely well, limiting the
Quakers to just 1 goal in thefourth quarter.
And now it's on to thequarterfinals.
There they faced a very toughCornell team, and this wound up
being a low-scoring defensivebattle.
Matt Russell had a terrificafternoon between the pipes.
(20:25):
He had a total of 12 saves,while Dingman, gil and bossy
accounted for five navy goals.
The Mids came out on top six tofive, and that put them in the
final four against Princeton, ateam that had won five national
championships in the 90s undercoaching legend Bill Tierney.
On paper it looked like it wasgoing to be a tough game, and
that's exactly the way it playedout.
I recall watching this game onESPN on Memorial Day weekend.
(20:47):
My stomach was pretty much inknots the whole time.
The Mids did jump out to a 2-0lead, so they clearly didn't
have the same early game jittersas I did.
Adam Reel opened the scoringabout five minutes in, and
Graham Gill added another one afew minutes later.
The Tigers didn't blink, though.
They scored back-to-back goalsto tie the game with three
minutes to go in the firstquarter, and, as a matter of
fact, those were the first twoshots the Princeton offense had
(21:09):
taken.
Gill did pick up his secondgoal about a minute later, and
Navy began the second quarterwith a 3-2 lead.
One thing I did want to mentionis that there was no shot clock
in 2004.
That wouldn't become part ofthe game for another 15 years,
and back in 04 the teamcontrolling the face-off had 10
seconds to get the ball acrossmidfield.
Once they did that and advancedit into the box, they could
(21:30):
hold on to the ball for the restof the game, in theory, as long
as they kept on attacking thegoal.
If the ref determined that theoffense was stalling, they got
put on a 30-second shot clock,but most of the teams were
pretty good at avoiding that.
Anyway, princeton took a moredeliberate approach when they
got the ball early in the secondquarter.
Their plan was to slow down theNavy offense, and one way to do
that was to limit theirpossessions.
So the Tigers wound up holdingon to the ball for five minutes
(21:52):
before they finally scored totie the game at three with just
over ten minutes left to go inthe half.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, oneof Navy's strengths the whole
season was their ability tocreate opportunities off the
draw.
They could score within secondsfollowing an opponent's goal,
which is a great way to stop ateam's momentum, and that's what
happened.
Once Princeton pulled evenagain, it took the Mids just 18
(22:13):
seconds to answer with not justone but two goals, and both came
courtesy of Ben Bailey.
The first was unassisted.
After Navy control to draw,they won the next one as well,
and Bailey scored again off anassist by Bill Looney.
That made the score of 5-3 wasjust a minute to go before half
time, princeton did add one moregoal before the second quarter
ran out, so they began thesecond half down five to four.
(22:34):
Now the third quarter was tight.
The Tigers tied the score atthe 9-44 mark and Russell had a
couple of keys saved to keepthings.
Even before.
The Mids strung together acouple of back-to-back goals.
In the last minute and a half,bossy broke the tie with his
42nd goal of the season and thenBill Looney rocketed a shot
past the Princeton goalie fromten yards out to extend the Navy
lead to two.
Going into the fourth quarter,princeton scored early to cut it
(22:57):
to one and they almost tied ita couple minutes later, but the
shot ricocheted off the leftpost and went straight to
midfielder Bucky Morris.
He got the fast break going,finding Dingman as he sprinted
up the field.
The big guy located Jon Bursneron the left side, about nine
yards out, and hit him with aperfect pass, and Bursner buried
the shot in the back of the netto give the Mids an 8-6 lead.
Now there were just eight and ahalf minutes away from
(23:18):
advancing to their first NCAAfinal since 1975.
It wasn't going to be easy,though.
Princeton scored with justunder five minutes left to make
it 8-7, and after winninganother face off, navy got a
decent look and put the ball onthe cage.
But the Tigers goalie made agreat stop and they came down
the field with a chance to tiethe game.
A bad pass resulted in acritical turnover, but the Mids
were unable to clear the ball.
A deflection redirected itright back to their own goal and
(23:40):
Russell was lucky to getcontrol after diving and beating
the Princeton player to it.
Then Coach Mead called thetimeout, with 45 seconds left to
set up the final sequence.
When the teams took the field,the Tigers pulled their
goalkeeper to give them an extraplayer to defend against the
Navy clear.
The Mids worked the ball arounduntil Graham Gill found himself
with an opportunity to ice thegame with an open net goal, but
incredibly, the ball bounced offthe right post and went out of
(24:01):
bounds.
Princeton still had 33 secondsleft to try and force overtime.
They got the ball into theoffensive zone and called
timeout with 21 seconds left toplay and, believe me, that was
the longest 21 seconds oflacrosse I'd ever witnessed.
The Tigers calmly looked fortheir opportunity and got what
they were looking for.
The shot came from point blankrange, but Matt Russell just had
some crazy instincts in thesesituations.
Princeton attackman PeterTrombino took the shot just four
(24:24):
yards away and Russell stoppedit cold.
Then he lobbed a high arcingpass down the field as time ran
out, the Mids had just punchedtheir ticket to the championship
game.
There wasn't a lot of time tocelebrate, though.
Waiting for them on the otherside of the bracket was Syracuse
, and they were no strangers tothe tournament.
The Orange had made it to thechampionship game in three of
the previous four years, winningthe title in 2000 and 2002.
(24:46):
And they were playing some oftheir best lacrosse, going into
the 2004 tournament having takenout number one seed Johns
Hopkins in the semifinals.
The game was a back and forthaffair from the start, with
neither team having more than atwo goal advantage.
The Mids got on the board firstin a man up situation, when Ben
Bailey scooped up a ball on apass intended for Dingman and
sent it past Syracuse goalkeeper.
The Orange came right backscoring two straight goals to go
(25:09):
up two to one with about 10minutes left in the first
quarter.
The Mids pulled even.
A little over a minute later,sophomore Tackmann-Taylor Harris
found some open space in frontof the crease and the Syracuse
defense was slow to react.
Harris took a feed from AdamReel and quickly got off his
shot to the left side of thecage, scoring high to low.
The two teams then traded goalsto end the first quarter tied
up at four.
The Mids picked up their thirdgoal when Steve Looney found his
(25:30):
brother Billy, whose bounceshot went right over the
Syracuse goalies left shoulderand got just under the crossbar.
After the Orange scored theirfourth goal, Graham Gill got the
Mids even again.
With three seconds left in thequarter, he created just enough
space to get a pass from Birsner, who was behind the cage, and
quick-sticked it into the lowerright corner.
After the first 15 minutes itwas pretty clear that this game
was going to be a battle all theway to the end.
(25:50):
Chris Pieczonka who wasabsolutely amazing on face-offs
the entire tournament wonanother draw.
To start the second quarter,steve Looney scooped up the
ground ball and got it back toPieczonka, who found Bossi
cutting in from the right side.
Bossi faked a shot, getting thegoalie to commit, and scored
easily to put the Mids up by one.
That goal got Syracuse'sattention because they went on
(26:10):
to score three straight in aspan of four minutes to take a
two-goal lead at 7-5.
The Mids got back to within onewith just under six minutes to
go in the half on a man-up goalby Dingman.
Birsner fed him with abeautiful no-look pass that was
right on his stick.
Dingman didn't even wind up, hejust flicked it past the goalie
.
Then, with less than a minuteto go in a half, Dingman drove
hard from behind the right sideof the cage and drew a double
(26:30):
team.
As he prepared to shoot fromabout five yards out.
Seeing the slide, he passed theball to Ben Horn who was camped
out on the left side of thecrease.
The goalie could not react intime and Horn, with another
quick stick, put a shot past thegoalie on the left side and the
half ended with both teams tiedat 7.
After trading goals to open athird quarter, another offensive
burst from the Orange put themup 10-8.
They scored twice in less thana minute and held the Mids
(26:53):
scoreless the rest of thequarter.
The Navy offense found a nicerhythm to start the fourth
quarter, taking advantage ofanother man-up opportunity.
This time it was Bursner frombehind the goal, finding Horn
with what was basically ano-look alley-oop pass.
Horn went airborne to get itand it was out of his stick
before he even landed.
That made the score 10-9.
They scored again two minuteslater when Dingman hit Bursner
with a beautiful feed afterdrawing another double team.
(27:14):
It was almost the exact samelook as the assist Dingman had
to Horn in the first half.
Then, with 10 minutes to go inthe game, the Mids took the lead
on a goal by Bossi that fitthrough the tiniest of windows,
beating the Syracuse goalkeeperon the left side just above the
hip, and there couldn't havebeen more than about 10 inches
between him and the pipe.
So here's where things stood.
The Mids now led 11-10, with9-54 to go, but there is
(27:37):
something worth noting before wecontinue.
At some point either in thethird quarter or very early into
fourth, Navy goalie MattRussell injured his shoulder.
It was later reported that hehad dislocated it.
Anyway, keep that in mindmoving forward, because Syracuse
scored the game-time goal atabout the 9-minute mark, after
two Navy penalties put them twomen down and then, coming off
(27:57):
the timeout with 8-01 left,Russell finally came out of the
game for good.
He was just in too much pain.
Colin Finnegan, a freshman who'donly seen 55 minutes of action
all year, was the guy whoreplaced him.
It was a tough situation towalk into, but the Navy offense
did its best to take thepressure off of him.
As it turns out, it wasFinnegan who was partly
responsible for the Mids' nextgoal.
After a terrific defensive playby Hendler to strip Syracuse
(28:18):
attackman Mike Powell of theball, he got it to Finnegan, who
found Clipper Lennon flyingdown the middle of the field.
Finnegan hit him with a perfectpass and Lennon kept right on
going, ripping a shot past thegoalie from about 12 yards out
to give the Mids a 12-11 lead.
Now there was just 5 minutes 39seconds left to play in the
game.
Unfortunately, the Orange tiedit less than a minute later and
then took the lead about 90seconds after that.
(28:41):
Pieczonka won another draw, butDingman couldn't convert, and
the Mids did get the ball back,but the Syracuse defense came up
with a ground ball that led toa 3-1 fast break.
Powell scored with about aminute left to give the Orange a
14-12 lead.
It still wasn't over yet,though.
Pieczonka won yet another drawand got the ball to Dingman
behind the goal, and he justoverpowered his defender on the
(29:01):
left side and gave himself justenough of an angle to fire off a
shot that I'm not even sure thegoalie saw.
It was 14-13 and there was 40seconds left.
I didn't even need to watch thevideo to recall the next
sequence.
It has been tattooed in mybrain for the last 20 years.
Pieczonka won the draw againbig surprise there and beat
everyone to the ground ball.
(29:21):
He was sprinting toward thegoal, and just as he took his
shot, a Syracuse defender, doveand, got just enough of his
stick to send it wide right, andbecause Bossy was starting his
cut towards the cage from theright to be ready for a possible
pass, he couldn't get back fastenough to back up the shot.
The Orange got the ball, but alate interference call against
him gave the mids one last shotwith 13 seconds left.
A pass by Gill looked like itwas deflected about 15 yards in
(29:44):
front of the cage and the twoteams scrambled for possession
before one of the Syracuseplayers finally picked it up.
He passed it down the field astime expired.
Final score Syracuse 14-13.
The mid's incredible run afterbeing unranked at the start of
the year was over.
You know, when I look back onthat 2004 Navy Men's Lacrosse
season, there were just so manythings to appreciate about that
(30:07):
team.
They were coming off a verydisappointing year in 2003, and,
led by Coach Meade, they justdecided that 2004 was going to
be different, and it truly was.
Their 15 wins was a programrecord in the NCAA era.
Dingman was the team's pointsleader with 62 on 36 goals and
26 assists.
Bossi had 44 goals to lead theteam in that category.
(30:27):
And just to give you an idea ofNavy's depth, Dingman, Bossi,
Birsner, Gill, Steve Looney andBen Bailey all finished the
season with more than 20 points,and freshman Bill Looney was
right there with 19.
One of the things I found mostgratifying was that the core of
the team was made up ofunderclassmen, but the seniors,
led by Bossi and Bailey, helpedestablish a culture where, on
(30:48):
the field and in the locker room, everyone was treated equally.
That helped create a teamchemistry based on trust, and
you saw it in the way theyplayed.
But I think what I appreciatedmost about that 2004 team was
that they represented whatcollege sports are all about.
They came to Navy to servetheir country, but they loved
playing lacrosse too.
They knew that there was nochance of playing professionally
and earning money throughendorsement deals.
(31:09):
They just wanted to show thatthey could compete with the best
teams in the country and in2004, the Mid certainly proved
it.
They captured the hearts ofcollege lacrosse fans across the
country and took one of themost storied programs all the
way down to the wire before theclock finally struck 12.
It was one hell of an amazingrun.
We'll be right back.
(31:42):
All right, we are starting towind things down here, so that
means it is time for ourquestion of the day and before
we get to it, let's go ahead andcheck the responses to the one
from our last episode.
You'll recall that our guestwas Coach John Morrison from the
Navy Women's Swimming andDiving Team.
And here is the question Inaddition to winning multiple
league championships, coachMorrison has also developed a
(32:02):
number of swimmers who havequalified for the Olympic trials
.
How many have gone to thetrials under his direction?
Is it A 6, B 9, C 11, or D 12?
So in checking the answers, themost popular one was B 9
Swimmers.
75% of you went with that oneand the other 25% thought it was
A6.
Turns out, the correct answeris actually D 12 Swimmers.
(32:26):
Coach Morrison had fourathletes qualify in 2021, five
in 2016, and three in 2012.
And I have a feeling he couldbe adding to that total in the
next couple of years as ElAhabian continues to develop.
Okay, now it's time for ourquestion for this episode.
As of right now, there are nineNavy lacrosse players who have
scored over 150 points in theircareers.
How many of them came from that2004 team that made it to the
(32:48):
NCAA Championship game?
Was it A 1, B 2, C 3, or D 4?
And, by the way, you get extracredit if you come up with the
name or names of the players.
Give that some thought and youcan answer by replying to the
poll question on the Navy SportsNation group Facebook page.
Now let's wrap things up byseeing how our two athletes on
(33:09):
the Midwatch finished up theirseasons.
Let's go ahead and start withZanai
Barnett- Gay of the women'sbasketball team.
From about the fourth game ofthe season, when she scored 29
points against Binghamton, youkind of got the feeling that she
was a pretty special player.
- Gay helped spark a turnaroundin the program that saw the
mids go from 1-17 in the PatriotLeague to 9-9, while advancing
to the quarterfinals of thePatriot League tournament, and
(33:30):
that game against Colgate was indoubt till the end.
Barnett Gay finished up herfirst year as a team leader in
points, averaging 18.2 a game,and the same goes for rebounds,
where she pulled down 6.2 percontest.
And she was no slouch ondefense either, coming up with a
total of 89 steals on theseason.
That was also a team high.
The women's basketball teamwill only be losing three
seniors, so Coach Taylor willhave a strong court to build
(33:51):
upon for next year.
Barnett Gay and her classmateKyah Smith give the Mids one of
the most talented backcourts inthe league, so I am very excited
to see how this team continuesto develop over the next few
years.
Now let's move on to AustinBenigni from the men's
basketball team.
What I like to buy the most isthe way he always found a way to
impact the game.
Benini was the only player toaverage double digits on the
season, putting up 17 per game.
(34:12):
He's got a good outside shot,but his strength was definitely
creating off the dribble andgetting to the rim, and usually
he'd wind up making the basketgetting fouled or both.
Coach DeChellis also put apretty young team on the court
this year.
His starting lineup in the twoPatriot League tournament games
consisted of a freshman, threesophomores, including Benigni
and a junior.
So based on how much theydeveloped throughout the year, I
(34:34):
expect to see more good thingsin 2025.
And finally, I wanted to giveyou all a heads up with respect
to the two athletes who will betracking in the spring.
For the women, it will be EmilyMessinese.
She is a midfielder on thelacrosse team and she's off to a
very strong start.
The Navy offense has been hitby a couple of really big
injuries early on.
Both Eva Jovino and Lili Dentonare out for the year, so
(34:56):
Messinese has become an evenbigger focal point when the Mids
have the ball.
So far, she's the team leaderin points, with 29 on 24 goals
and five assists, and in the winover Jacksonville this past
weekend.
She scored three goals andassisted on two more to finish
with five points.
The Mids head into theirPatriot League schedule with a
6-1 record and they are ranked18th in the country For the men.
We'll be following Brock Murthafrom the baseball team.
He is a sophomore from Saville,new York.
(35:18):
Murtha plays infield and healso pitches.
What's most interesting here isthat he started his career at
Notre Dame and decided totransfer to Navy last year, and
I have a feeling Ristano mightmight have had something to do
with that, because he was thepitching coach for the Irish
during Murtha's freshman year.
Anyway, like I said, mertha isprimarily an infielder and he
currently leads the Mids inhitting, with a 400 average on
55 at bats.
His on base percentage isnearly 57%.
(35:41):
Mertha also leads the team insteals and is second in RBIs.
The Mids are currently 8 and 8and they start their Patriot
League schedule this weekendwith a four game series against
Bucknell.
So be sure to stay tuned as wetrack Brock Murtha's progress
throughout the rest of the year.
That's going to do it for thisedition of Navy Sports Central.
Thank you all so much forjoining us Now.
If you like what you've heard.
(36:01):
Please be sure to hit thatfollow button wherever you get
your podcast and remember to getthe word to all the other Navy
fans out there.
Our question of the daycontinues to be a show favorite.
You can get in on that byjoining the Navy Sports Nation
group Facebook page and givingyour answer to this week's
question.
I will pin it to the top so youdon't miss it.
And just a quick reminder theviews expressed on Navy Sports
Central are my own and do notreflect those of the US Naval
(36:23):
Academy or Navy Athletics.
By the way, the music used inNavy Sports Central comes to you
courtesy of Audio Jungle.
This is a great site forpurchasing the rights to use the
music from thousands of artistsaround the world, and those
featured in the podcast will becredited in our show notes.
Talk to you soon, everybody.
Until next time.
This is Karl Darden.
Go Navy! Beat Army!
Hi everybody, my name is Karl Darden and I'd like to
welcome and thank all of you forjoining us today on Navy Sports
Central.
I'm your host, and this is theofficial podcast of the Navy
Sports Nation, where we take adeeper dive into Navy sports.
It isn't quite officiallyspring time in Annapolis, but it
might as well be, since all thespring sports teams are solid
three to four weeks into theirseasons.
In our update, I'll get youcaught up on how the winter
sports finished, which includedpicking up four more Patriot
(00:36):
League championships, and you'llbe meeting the two athletes who
will be tracking in ourmid-watch segments over the next
few months.
Finally, in our deep divesegment, we're going to go back
20 years and revisit thatincredible run that the 2004
Navy Men's Cross Team had thatput them right on the doorstep
of winning their nationalchampionship.
That was one very special teamand I will do my level best to
tell their story, so stickaround.
All right, it is great to haveyou with us today on Navy Sports
(01:08):
Central, whether you are aregular listener or this is your
first visit.
Thanks for taking the time.
Now we're going to go ahead andjump right into things with our
sports update and with ourwinter teams finishing up their
seasons, I've got quite a bit topass along, so let's get
started with men's basketball.
On balance, I would say theteam came out right about where
I expected this year.
They definitely had the talentto get about nine or ten wins in
(01:30):
the Patriot League, but I felt,because they were a young team,
closing out some games might bean issue, and it turns out that
they finished seven and nine,eight and ten if you include the
tournament results.
But two of those losses wereagainst Loyola, who the Mids
beat in the tournament, and alsoto Army in overtime.
So the team was that close togoing nine and seven instead of
the other way around.
(01:51):
But overall I like where theyare as we look ahead to the next
couple of years.
There are a lot ofunderclassmen that got quality
minutes this year.
Besides Austin Benigni, whowe've been tracking in our
midwatch segment, we've gotDonovan Draper, another
sophomore, who was a second onthe team in scoring with nine
and a half points a game, and hewas also the team's leading
rebounder with just over nineper contest.
(02:11):
And then you had a couple ofjuniors, Lysander Rehnstrom and
also Mac McDonald, who were theMids two most consistent
shooters from beyond the arc.
So with this bunch ofexperienced underclassmen coming
back, I'm looking forward toseeing if the Mids can get a
little bit deeper into thePatriot League tournament next
year.
As far as the women's team goes,I thought they had a remarkable
(02:32):
season.
Remember the Mids just had onewin last year, going one and 29,
so that had to be really,really tough.
But Coach Taylor acknowledgedhow important the seniors
Morganne Andrews, Sam Schofieldand Sydne Watts were in getting
things turned around.
They stayed positive throughall that adversity last year and
, even though they had a littlebit more of a supporting role
this season, they were alwaysready to play and contribute
(02:53):
when their number was called.
And of course, the two playerslargely responsible for the
Mids' huge improvement were acouple of freshmen.
Zanai Barnett- Gay was selectedas the Patriot League rookie of
the year in what had to be oneof the easiest decisions ever
made in that category and on topof that her backcourt made Kyah
Smith joined Barnett- Gay onthe All Rookie team.
The Mids ended up going 9-9 inthe Patriot League and they had
(03:13):
a solid 11-6 record at AlumniHall.
And they had a real shot atbeating number two Colgate in
the quarterfinals of the PatriotLeague tournament, but the
Raiders experience proved to bethe difference in the end.
Just like the men, though, thewomen had a lot of young
players get some quality minutes, so I'm looking for them to get
a little bit further into thetournament next year.
Now let's move on to wrestling,where the EIWA tournament was
(03:34):
just completed.
Last year, coach Colott sentfive wrestlers to the NCAA
championships and he was lookingto at least match that number
this season.
Not only did he do that, butNavy has another regional
champion at 141 pounds in JoshKoderhandt.
In the final he took on DylanChappelle from Bucknell
University.
After neither wrestler got onthe board in the first period,
chappelle scored an escape inthe second to go up 1-0.
(03:56):
Koderhandt came back with atake down midway through the
period and then scored a fourpoint near fall to gain a 7-1
advantage.
And he picked up four morepoints on an escape and another
take down in the third period,and then he got the riding time
point to win the title match bya 12-2 major decision.
The other four wrestlers goingto the NCAA tournament besides
Koderhandt will be AndrewCerniglia at 165 pounds, Danny
(04:17):
Wask at 174, David Key at 184and Grady Griess in the
heavyweight division.
Okay.
Next up we have the Rifle team,which capped off an outstanding
year by finishing sixth in theNCAA championships that just
wrapped up.
The top finisher for the midswas Senior Clarissa Layland, who
led the team with 1179 points.
Sophomore Marleigh Duncan wasright behind her with 1175, and
(04:41):
rounding out the top five forthe mids were Isabella Baldwin,
Deontae Hayes and StephanieMilvain.
This was a record setting yearfor the Rifle team.
They broke the program's teamscoring mark in all three
categories, which are small bore, air rifle and then overall,
and they surpassed 4,700 pointsnine times.
And, by the way, that sixthplace finish at the NCAA
championships was one betterthan their seeding.
(05:03):
They were actually seventhgoing in.
So great job to coach Ante andhis team.
The next two teams we're goingto take a look at are men's and
women's track and field, and themain thing to report there is
that both of them repeated asPatriot League champions, which
I don't think was a hugesurprise to anybody.
So what I'm going to do now isjust go through all the
individual winners.
We'll start with the men.
(05:24):
First off we have Brahmir Vick,who won both the 60 meter dash
and also the 60 meter hurdles.
Nathan Kent also picked up acouple of wins.
He won the 200 and 400 meterdash and Murphy Smith picked up
a win in the 5,000 meter run.
Navy also had two relay teamsfinish first, the four by 400
meter relay team of Nathan Kent,David Walker, Jay Evans and
(05:46):
Jacques Guillaume set a meetrecord, and they were also
joined by the distance medleyrelay team of Luke Nester,
Jayshon Dubose, Carson Sloat andMatt Newell.
On the field events, JoshBoamah picked up wins in both
the weight throw and the shotput, walker Rudisaile won the
pole vault and Jordan Payne cameout on top in the triple jump.
On the women's side, yourwinners were Sophia Richter in
(06:08):
the 400 meters, Gia Anderson inthe 60 meter hurdles, Elena
Schroeder picked up a win in thepole vault and Annie Taylor won
the indoor heptathlon.
The women also won two relays.
The four by 800 meter relay waswon by Alex Wersinski, Mckenna
Brophy, Kayla McGuire and EllieAbraham, and then Wersinski and
Abraham teamed with KatelynPepin and Annie Taylor to win
(06:30):
the distance medley.
And, by the way, that was thefifth straight Patriot League
championship for both the menand the women.
The men's and women's swimmingand diving teams also repeated
as Patriot League champions, soI'm really glad I didn't jinx
them by having coach Roberts andcoach Morrison on before they
took place.
The women went in fairlycomfortable fashion, but the men
did have to battle army intothe third day and it was
(06:51):
actually the divers who gavethem the separation they needed
to win the meet.
Finn Gelbach, George Moore andBlake Shaw swept the three meter
event, which meant that themids four by 400 relay team just
needed to finish the race toclaim the title.
Instead, they went out and wonit anyway, setting a meet record
in the process.
And in case any of you arekeeping score out there, that
makes it 12th straight PatriotLeague championships for the
(07:12):
women and 22 overall, which is arecord.
Meanwhile, the men ran theirstreak of consecutive
championships to 20 without aloss.
All right, our sports update iscomplete and coming up next we
have our deep dive segment,which you do not want to miss, I
(07:40):
think.
For Navy La Crosse fans, 2004has to rank as one of the most
memorable years in the historyof the program.
The team the mids put on thefield that spring was extremely
talented and they possessed thekind of chemistry that every
coach dreams of.
But I think it's fair to saythat not too many people, even
diehard Navy fans, could havepredicted what happened that
year.
So, to set things up, I thinkit's best to take a quick look
(08:02):
and see how the 2003 seasonfinished up.
Richie Mead was entering hisninth season as Navy's head
coach.
That year, the mids had puttogether back-to-back eight and
five seasons in 2001 and 2002 asmembers of the East Coast
Athletic Conference, and theywere looking to build on that so
they could punch their ticketto the NCAA tournament.
It had been four years sincethey last qualified, having lost
in the first round in 1999.
(08:24):
The 2003 didn't go as expected.
The mids got off to a faststart by winning their first
three games, and two of thosewere against ranked opponents
number 19 Ohio State and number9 North Carolina.
After that they dropped five oftheir next six, and four of
those losses came to teamsranked in the top 15.
Going into their final game ofthe season against 16th ranked
Army, navy was sitting on a fiveand seven record and any hope
(08:44):
of picking up a bid to the NCAAtournament was long gone.
Now they did pull thingstogether and beat the Black
Knights 12-11 to finish the yearat six and seven.
That salvaged what many Navyfans viewed as a disappointing
season and no doubt there'd be alot of questions in 2004.
The mids were joining the newlyformed Patriot League and Coach
Mead was heading into his tenthseason with only one NCAA
appearance.
(09:05):
But I think the biggestquestion on every Navy fans mind
was could this team, whichlooked pretty good on paper,
figure out a way to winconsistently?
Nobody really knew for sure.
So let's go ahead and take alook at that 2004 roster.
The first thing you notice isthat it wasn't a team that was
loaded with seniors.
In fact, there were just eighton the 44 man squad and only
(09:26):
three of them were in thestarting lineup.
But those guys were exceptionalplayers and they were
surrounded by some outstandingunderclassmen.
So before we get into some ofthe season's key games, I wanted
to talk about a handful ofplayers who played such a
critical role in the team'ssuccess, and we'll go ahead and
start with the attackman.
First up we have Ian Dingman.
He was a sophomore and, at 6'3", 248 pounds, he was a
(09:49):
defenseman's nightmare whetherhe was on the move or parked in
front of the crease.
In 2003, dingman was second onthe team in goals with 17 and in
points with 24.
Those were pretty decentnumbers for a freshman, but, as
Navy fans were about to find out, he was just getting started.
A big key to Navy's attack wasSenior Joe Bossi.
He was from Skaneateles, NewYork, which was about 22 miles
(10:11):
southwest of Syracuse.
Bossi put up 17 points in 2003,on 12 goals and five assists,
and that was just a drop in thebucket compared to what he did
in 2004.
Next we have John Birsner fromLevittown, new York.
He was another sophomore andput up some decent numbers as a
freshman, also with nine goalsand nine assists, but again,
this would prove to be anothercase of you ain't seen nothing
(10:33):
yet, because in 2004, Birsnerwould team up with Dingman and
Bossy to form an attack linethat produced 151 points.
Navy also had some great scoreson their midfield line.
Junior Graham Gill was comingoff a 21 point season which
consisted of 13 goals and eightassists.
He would add another 10 goalsand two assists to that total in
2004.
Senior Ben Bailey was fromMemphis, TN, where lacrosse was
(10:56):
just starting to catch on At thetime.
There are only 20 programs inthe entire state.
Bailey was clearly one of thebetter players, though, because
he put up 14 goals for the midsduring his junior year and, just
like everyone else I'vementioned so far, he improved on
those numbers significantly in2004.
Finally, I did want to mentionthe Looney brothers, Brendan,
Steve and Bill.
Brendan came to Navy tooriginally to play football, and
(11:17):
then he ended up transitioningto lacrosse so he could be on
the field with his brothers.
His brother, Steve, was asophomore, and Bill was an
incoming freshman.
As part of the Mids' newrecruiting class.
They were both double-digitpoint producers in 2004,
combining for 43 altogether.
Navy's interior defense was ledby senior Jared Bosanko and a
couple of juniors, Mike Felberand Mitch Hendler.
The goalkeeper was a sophomoreby the name of Matt Russell.
(11:40):
These four guys were a bigreason why the Mids only gave up
an average of seven goals pergame, and when the defense is
put into clamps on opposingoffenses like that, you're gonna
pick up quite a few wins.
Okay, those are some of theplayers you'll be hearing about
as we continue, and there willbe others that I bring up as we
talk about what I consider to bethree key games that shape
Navy's season.
The first of these was againstNorth Carolina.
(12:01):
Navy had beaten the Tar Heels9-8 at home in 2003, but trying
to repeat that result in ChapelHill was not going to be easy.
The Mids were unranked and cameinto the game with a 1-1 record
.
They beat Marist 14-1 to openthe season and then lost the
following week to Ohio State12-9.
Unc was ranked fourth in thecountry and was looking to get
back to the NCAA tournamentafter missing out in 2003.
(12:22):
The Tar Heels struck first on anunassisted goal to make the
score 1-0 just 5 minutes intothe game, and then 7 seconds
later, the score was tied.
The Mids controlled the faceoff and Brendan Looney came up
with the ground ball.
He quickly found Dingman in thefront of the crease and the big
man buried the shot to get theMids on the board.
Each team scored once morebefore the end of the quarter,
bringing the count to two goalsapiece.
And, by the way, pay attentionto Navy's ability to score
(12:45):
quickly after giving up a goal.
You can hear that more than afew times as we go through these
games.
In the second quarter, the Midsstrung together back to back
goals.
Graham Gill got the first oneand then, 60 seconds later,
senior Midfielder Matt Madurafollowed that up with one of his
own.
North Carolina did get one ofthose back a little bit later
and the Mids took a 4-3 leadinto the locker room at halftime
.
Two minutes into the thirdquarter, graham Gill picked up
(13:06):
his second goal of the game andwith the Mids up by two, the
defense is settled in andcontrolled the next 10 minutes.
Then the Navy offense tookadvantage of a transition
opportunity when juniordefensive midfielder Clipper
Lennon found Dingman for hissecond goal to the contest.
Two more goals were scored inthe next 46 seconds, one by each
team.
First the UNC climbed backwithin two goals 40 seconds
after Dingman scored and then onthe following draw, the Mids'
(13:29):
faceoff specialist Chris Posankagot control and sprinted down
the field on a fast break.
He scored unassisted to givethe Mids a 7-4 lead just six
seconds into the fourth quarter.
But the Tar Heels just wouldnot go away.
They strung together threeconsecutive goals to tie the
score.
With 8.5 minutes to go in thegame.
Posanka won the next draw andSteve Looney scooped up the
ground ball on the wing.
Meanwhile, posanka just keptrunning towards the goal.
(13:49):
Looney hit him with a perfectpass and he fired it past the
UNC goalkeeper to put the Midsup 8-7.
It stayed that way untilCarolina tied the score again
with about a minute and a halfto go, and then neither team
could score the game winnerbefore time ran out.
So they went to a 5 minuteovertime and just about halfway
through Clipper Lennon came upwith the ball on another
transition opportunity.
This time he took it to thecage himself and found the back
(14:11):
of the net to give the Mids ahuge 9-8 overtime win.
Lennon finished the game withthree points on two goals and
one assist, while Dingman, galeand Posanka also had two goals
each.
On defense, coach Meade had alot of good things to say about
sophomore Matt Russell'sperformance and goal.
It was his very first start andhe came up with 12 saves to
help nail down the win.
Taking down the number fourranked Tar Heels gave the Mids a
(14:32):
huge boost.
They were playing with a lot ofconfidence and they won their
next three games handily by acombined score of 45-19.
So by the end of March theywere sitting on a 5-1 record.
As they traveled up the WestPoint to take on Army, the Black
Knights qualified for the NCAATournament in 2003 and they had
every intention of going back.
A win over the Mids would go along way towards them achieving
(14:53):
that goal.
Both teams really came outswinging to start the game.
Dingman and Birsner helpedstake the Mids to a 4-1 lead,
but Armin rung up three goals ina row to tie the score in the
last few minutes of the quarter.
Then Graham Gill picked up hissecond goal to retake the lead,
and that's when the floodgatesopened.
The Navy offense went crazy,scoring seven consecutive goals
to close out the half, and theirdefense shut Armin out
(15:16):
completely.
In the second quarter, the midscontinued adding to their lead
with three more scores early inthe third to go up 14-4, before
the Black Knights finallymanaged to stop the bleeding
with one goal.
Navy answered with two morelate in the third, followed by
two more in the fourth, and thatpretty much did it.
Armin did tack on a handful ofgarbage goals at the end, but
when the horn sounded they wereon the wrong end of an 18-10
(15:36):
beatdown.
Dingman and Burschner led thescoring barrage with three goals
and three assists each.
That's basically a hat trick ongoal to hand assists.
And then Joe Bossi added a hattrick of his own plus an assist.
Graham Gill had a couple ofgoals and one assist himself.
It was a truly dominantperformance against a pretty
good Army team, and the onething people began to realize
was that Navy could beat teamsin any number of different ways.
(15:57):
Usually, when opponents tookthe field against them, they
figured out being involved in areal slugfest and a pretty low
scoring game.
But this team was different.
There was a lot more flow totheir offense and any attackmen
or midfielder they had out therewas a threat to score.
That made them very, verydangerous.
And two weeks after beatingArmy, the best team in the
country found out just howdangerous Navy really was.
(16:21):
The University of Maryland hadone of the elite college
lacrosse programs in all ofDivision I, and that goes for
both the men and the women.
The Terrapins had a standingreservation at the NCAA
tournament every year, it seemed.
In 2003, they made it to theFinal Four before they were
beaten by the University ofVirginia, who went on to defeat
Johns Hopkins in the title game.
Now, by the middle of the 2004season, the Terps are undefeated
(16:42):
at 8-0 and ranked number one inthe country.
The week prior to welcomingNavy to College Park, they had
smoked defending championVirginia 11-2, so they were
feeling pretty confident thatthey could keep their unbeaten
streak going.
The Mids thought otherwise.
Joe Bossi and Ben Bailey gotthe offense going early with a
goal apiece, putting them up 2-0.
Maryland cut the lead to 1 onan unassisted goal, but the Mids
(17:02):
came right back thanks toBossi's quick reaction.
Team-mate Adam Real took a shotthat the Maryland goalkeeper
couldn't quite control and Bossiquickly scooped up the rebound
and jammed it past him to givethe Mids a 3-1 lead.
The team's traded scores beforethe Terps tied the game with
back-to-back goals.
The second one came when Navywas two men down.
Right before the half JohnBursner scored off and assist by
Clipper Lennon.
So going into halftime the Midshad a one-goal lead.
(17:24):
The only problem was there werestill 30 minutes of lacrosse
left to play.
Maryland didn't waste any timeat all tying the game coming out
of the locker room.
They scored just a minute intothe second half, but with just
under 5 minutes to go in thequarter the Navy offense scored
four consecutive goals that takea 9-5 lead.
He got things started when hefired in a shot underhanded on a
man-up opportunity.
(17:44):
And then Gill got the next oneby catching a missed shot by
John Bursner on the run and heput it past the goalie before he
could get his bearings.
Finally, dingman picked up thelast two goals, which are his
team leading 22nd and 23rd ofthe season.
The defense did the rest andthe Mids walked off the field
with the program defining 9-6win.
It was their first ever againsta top-ranked team.
From there, navy pretty muchrolled through the rest of the
(18:06):
season.
They finished undefeated in thePatriot League and the only
game they dropped the rest ofthe way was a 10-9 decision to
Johns Hopkins.
But despite that, the team hadfound the chemistry that was
missing in 2003.
And after winning the PatriotLeague championship, the Mids
received an automatic bid to theNCAA tournament.
Okay, we're going to go aheadand take a short break now, but
before we do that, I did want togive you all a couple of ways
(18:27):
to stay up to date on NavySports.
The first is to join the NavySports Nation group Facebook
page.
I've got a link to that in theshow notes.
Just click on it, answer acouple of questions and you'll
be good to go.
The second way takes even lesstime.
Just hit the follow button.
On whichever platform you'relistening to this podcast right
now.
It can be Apple Podcasts,spotify, iheart Radio, it
(18:48):
doesn't matter.
Once you do that, every episodewill be downloaded to your
directory when it's released andyou can listen to it whenever
you're ready.
So please consider becoming amember of our group and you can
actually tap that follow buttonright now to show your support
for the podcast.
I'm looking forward to havingyou join us.
We'll be right back.
Thanks for staying with us onNavy Sports Central, Karl Darden
(19:21):
here with you, and today we arecelebrating the 2004 Men's
Lacrosse team.
20 years ago, they put togethera season Navy fans will never
forget, and they came within aneyelash of winning the national
championship.
We left off before the break,with the Mids having earned a
trip to the NCAA tournamentafter winning the Patriot League
title In the first round.
They faced the University ofPennsylvania in Annapolis on
(19:43):
what turned out to be a veryhumid afternoon.
In fact, neither team wasparticularly sharp early, but
the Navy offense finally settledin halfway through the second
quarter and took a 4-1 lead atthe half, after the Quakers made
it 4-2 early.
In the third, joe Bossi justtook over.
He scored 3 goals in less than4 minutes to put the Mids up 7-2
, and from there they cruised toan 11-5 win.
(20:05):
Bossi finished with 4 goals andDingman and Gill had 2 apiece.
And the Navy defense playedextremely well, limiting the
Quakers to just 1 goal in thefourth quarter.
And now it's on to thequarterfinals.
There they faced a very toughCornell team, and this wound up
being a low-scoring defensivebattle.
Matt Russell had a terrificafternoon between the pipes.
(20:25):
He had a total of 12 saves,while Dingman, gil and bossy
accounted for five navy goals.
The Mids came out on top six tofive, and that put them in the
final four against Princeton, ateam that had won five national
championships in the 90s undercoaching legend Bill Tierney.
On paper it looked like it wasgoing to be a tough game, and
that's exactly the way it playedout.
I recall watching this game onESPN on Memorial Day weekend.
(20:47):
My stomach was pretty much inknots the whole time.
The Mids did jump out to a 2-0lead, so they clearly didn't
have the same early game jittersas I did.
Adam Reel opened the scoringabout five minutes in, and
Graham Gill added another one afew minutes later.
The Tigers didn't blink, though.
They scored back-to-back goalsto tie the game with three
minutes to go in the firstquarter, and, as a matter of
fact, those were the first twoshots the Princeton offense had
(21:09):
taken.
Gill did pick up his secondgoal about a minute later, and
Navy began the second quarterwith a 3-2 lead.
One thing I did want to mentionis that there was no shot clock
in 2004.
That wouldn't become part ofthe game for another 15 years,
and back in 04 the teamcontrolling the face-off had 10
seconds to get the ball acrossmidfield.
Once they did that and advancedit into the box, they could
(21:30):
hold on to the ball for the restof the game, in theory, as long
as they kept on attacking thegoal.
If the ref determined that theoffense was stalling, they got
put on a 30-second shot clock,but most of the teams were
pretty good at avoiding that.
Anyway, princeton took a moredeliberate approach when they
got the ball early in the secondquarter.
Their plan was to slow down theNavy offense, and one way to do
that was to limit theirpossessions.
So the Tigers wound up holdingon to the ball for five minutes
(21:52):
before they finally scored totie the game at three with just
over ten minutes left to go inthe half.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, oneof Navy's strengths the whole
season was their ability tocreate opportunities off the
draw.
They could score within secondsfollowing an opponent's goal,
which is a great way to stop ateam's momentum, and that's what
happened.
Once Princeton pulled evenagain, it took the Mids just 18
(22:13):
seconds to answer with not justone but two goals, and both came
courtesy of Ben Bailey.
The first was unassisted.
After Navy control to draw,they won the next one as well,
and Bailey scored again off anassist by Bill Looney.
That made the score of 5-3 wasjust a minute to go before half
time, princeton did add one moregoal before the second quarter
ran out, so they began thesecond half down five to four.
(22:34):
Now the third quarter was tight.
The Tigers tied the score atthe 9-44 mark and Russell had a
couple of keys saved to keepthings.
Even before.
The Mids strung together acouple of back-to-back goals.
In the last minute and a half,bossy broke the tie with his
42nd goal of the season and thenBill Looney rocketed a shot
past the Princeton goalie fromten yards out to extend the Navy
lead to two.
Going into the fourth quarter,princeton scored early to cut it
(22:57):
to one and they almost tied ita couple minutes later, but the
shot ricocheted off the leftpost and went straight to
midfielder Bucky Morris.
He got the fast break going,finding Dingman as he sprinted
up the field.
The big guy located Jon Bursneron the left side, about nine
yards out, and hit him with aperfect pass, and Bursner buried
the shot in the back of the netto give the Mids an 8-6 lead.
Now there were just eight and ahalf minutes away from
(23:18):
advancing to their first NCAAfinal since 1975.
It wasn't going to be easy,though.
Princeton scored with justunder five minutes left to make
it 8-7, and after winninganother face off, navy got a
decent look and put the ball onthe cage.
But the Tigers goalie made agreat stop and they came down
the field with a chance to tiethe game.
A bad pass resulted in acritical turnover, but the Mids
were unable to clear the ball.
A deflection redirected itright back to their own goal and
(23:40):
Russell was lucky to getcontrol after diving and beating
the Princeton player to it.
Then Coach Mead called thetimeout, with 45 seconds left to
set up the final sequence.
When the teams took the field,the Tigers pulled their
goalkeeper to give them an extraplayer to defend against the
Navy clear.
The Mids worked the ball arounduntil Graham Gill found himself
with an opportunity to ice thegame with an open net goal, but
incredibly, the ball bounced offthe right post and went out of
(24:01):
bounds.
Princeton still had 33 secondsleft to try and force overtime.
They got the ball into theoffensive zone and called
timeout with 21 seconds left toplay and, believe me, that was
the longest 21 seconds oflacrosse I'd ever witnessed.
The Tigers calmly looked fortheir opportunity and got what
they were looking for.
The shot came from point blankrange, but Matt Russell just had
some crazy instincts in thesesituations.
Princeton attackman PeterTrombino took the shot just four
(24:24):
yards away and Russell stoppedit cold.
Then he lobbed a high arcingpass down the field as time ran
out, the Mids had just punchedtheir ticket to the championship
game.
There wasn't a lot of time tocelebrate, though.
Waiting for them on the otherside of the bracket was Syracuse
, and they were no strangers tothe tournament.
The Orange had made it to thechampionship game in three of
the previous four years, winningthe title in 2000 and 2002.
(24:46):
And they were playing some oftheir best lacrosse, going into
the 2004 tournament having takenout number one seed Johns
Hopkins in the semifinals.
The game was a back and forthaffair from the start, with
neither team having more than atwo goal advantage.
The Mids got on the board firstin a man up situation, when Ben
Bailey scooped up a ball on apass intended for Dingman and
sent it past Syracuse goalkeeper.
The Orange came right backscoring two straight goals to go
(25:09):
up two to one with about 10minutes left in the first
quarter.
The Mids pulled even.
A little over a minute later,sophomore Tackmann-Taylor Harris
found some open space in frontof the crease and the Syracuse
defense was slow to react.
Harris took a feed from AdamReel and quickly got off his
shot to the left side of thecage, scoring high to low.
The two teams then traded goalsto end the first quarter tied
up at four.
The Mids picked up their thirdgoal when Steve Looney found his
(25:30):
brother Billy, whose bounceshot went right over the
Syracuse goalies left shoulderand got just under the crossbar.
After the Orange scored theirfourth goal, Graham Gill got the
Mids even again.
With three seconds left in thequarter, he created just enough
space to get a pass from Birsner, who was behind the cage, and
quick-sticked it into the lowerright corner.
After the first 15 minutes itwas pretty clear that this game
was going to be a battle all theway to the end.
(25:50):
Chris Pieczonka who wasabsolutely amazing on face-offs
the entire tournament wonanother draw.
To start the second quarter,steve Looney scooped up the
ground ball and got it back toPieczonka, who found Bossi
cutting in from the right side.
Bossi faked a shot, getting thegoalie to commit, and scored
easily to put the Mids up by one.
That goal got Syracuse'sattention because they went on
(26:10):
to score three straight in aspan of four minutes to take a
two-goal lead at 7-5.
The Mids got back to within onewith just under six minutes to
go in the half on a man-up goalby Dingman.
Birsner fed him with abeautiful no-look pass that was
right on his stick.
Dingman didn't even wind up, hejust flicked it past the goalie
.
Then, with less than a minuteto go in a half, Dingman drove
hard from behind the right sideof the cage and drew a double
(26:30):
team.
As he prepared to shoot fromabout five yards out.
Seeing the slide, he passed theball to Ben Horn who was camped
out on the left side of thecrease.
The goalie could not react intime and Horn, with another
quick stick, put a shot past thegoalie on the left side and the
half ended with both teams tiedat 7.
After trading goals to open athird quarter, another offensive
burst from the Orange put themup 10-8.
They scored twice in less thana minute and held the Mids
(26:53):
scoreless the rest of thequarter.
The Navy offense found a nicerhythm to start the fourth
quarter, taking advantage ofanother man-up opportunity.
This time it was Bursner frombehind the goal, finding Horn
with what was basically ano-look alley-oop pass.
Horn went airborne to get itand it was out of his stick
before he even landed.
That made the score 10-9.
They scored again two minuteslater when Dingman hit Bursner
with a beautiful feed afterdrawing another double team.
(27:14):
It was almost the exact samelook as the assist Dingman had
to Horn in the first half.
Then, with 10 minutes to go inthe game, the Mids took the lead
on a goal by Bossi that fitthrough the tiniest of windows,
beating the Syracuse goalkeeperon the left side just above the
hip, and there couldn't havebeen more than about 10 inches
between him and the pipe.
So here's where things stood.
The Mids now led 11-10, with9-54 to go, but there is
(27:37):
something worth noting before wecontinue.
At some point either in thethird quarter or very early into
fourth, Navy goalie MattRussell injured his shoulder.
It was later reported that hehad dislocated it.
Anyway, keep that in mindmoving forward, because Syracuse
scored the game-time goal atabout the 9-minute mark, after
two Navy penalties put them twomen down and then, coming off
(27:57):
the timeout with 8-01 left,Russell finally came out of the
game for good.
He was just in too much pain.
Colin Finnegan, a freshman who'donly seen 55 minutes of action
all year, was the guy whoreplaced him.
It was a tough situation towalk into, but the Navy offense
did its best to take thepressure off of him.
As it turns out, it wasFinnegan who was partly
responsible for the Mids' nextgoal.
After a terrific defensive playby Hendler to strip Syracuse
(28:18):
attackman Mike Powell of theball, he got it to Finnegan, who
found Clipper Lennon flyingdown the middle of the field.
Finnegan hit him with a perfectpass and Lennon kept right on
going, ripping a shot past thegoalie from about 12 yards out
to give the Mids a 12-11 lead.
Now there was just 5 minutes 39seconds left to play in the
game.
Unfortunately, the Orange tiedit less than a minute later and
then took the lead about 90seconds after that.
(28:41):
Pieczonka won another draw, butDingman couldn't convert, and
the Mids did get the ball back,but the Syracuse defense came up
with a ground ball that led toa 3-1 fast break.
Powell scored with about aminute left to give the Orange a
14-12 lead.
It still wasn't over yet,though.
Pieczonka won yet another drawand got the ball to Dingman
behind the goal, and he justoverpowered his defender on the
(29:01):
left side and gave himself justenough of an angle to fire off a
shot that I'm not even sure thegoalie saw.
It was 14-13 and there was 40seconds left.
I didn't even need to watch thevideo to recall the next
sequence.
It has been tattooed in mybrain for the last 20 years.
Pieczonka won the draw againbig surprise there and beat
everyone to the ground ball.
(29:21):
He was sprinting toward thegoal, and just as he took his
shot, a Syracuse defender, doveand, got just enough of his
stick to send it wide right, andbecause Bossy was starting his
cut towards the cage from theright to be ready for a possible
pass, he couldn't get back fastenough to back up the shot.
The Orange got the ball, but alate interference call against
him gave the mids one last shotwith 13 seconds left.
A pass by Gill looked like itwas deflected about 15 yards in
(29:44):
front of the cage and the twoteams scrambled for possession
before one of the Syracuseplayers finally picked it up.
He passed it down the field astime expired.
Final score Syracuse 14-13.
The mid's incredible run afterbeing unranked at the start of
the year was over.
You know, when I look back onthat 2004 Navy Men's Lacrosse
season, there were just so manythings to appreciate about that
(30:07):
team.
They were coming off a verydisappointing year in 2003, and,
led by Coach Meade, they justdecided that 2004 was going to
be different, and it truly was.
Their 15 wins was a programrecord in the NCAA era.
Dingman was the team's pointsleader with 62 on 36 goals and
26 assists.
Bossi had 44 goals to lead theteam in that category.
(30:27):
And just to give you an idea ofNavy's depth, Dingman, Bossi,
Birsner, Gill, Steve Looney andBen Bailey all finished the
season with more than 20 points,and freshman Bill Looney was
right there with 19.
One of the things I found mostgratifying was that the core of
the team was made up ofunderclassmen, but the seniors,
led by Bossi and Bailey, helpedestablish a culture where, on
(30:48):
the field and in the locker room, everyone was treated equally.
That helped create a teamchemistry based on trust, and
you saw it in the way theyplayed.
But I think what I appreciatedmost about that 2004 team was
that they represented whatcollege sports are all about.
They came to Navy to servetheir country, but they loved
playing lacrosse too.
They knew that there was nochance of playing professionally
and earning money throughendorsement deals.
(31:09):
They just wanted to show thatthey could compete with the best
teams in the country and in2004, the Mid certainly proved
it.
They captured the hearts ofcollege lacrosse fans across the
country and took one of themost storied programs all the
way down to the wire before theclock finally struck 12.
It was one hell of an amazingrun.
We'll be right back.
(31:42):
All right, we are starting towind things down here, so that
means it is time for ourquestion of the day and before
we get to it, let's go ahead andcheck the responses to the one
from our last episode.
You'll recall that our guestwas Coach John Morrison from the
Navy Women's Swimming andDiving Team.
And here is the question Inaddition to winning multiple
league championships, coachMorrison has also developed a
(32:02):
number of swimmers who havequalified for the Olympic trials
.
How many have gone to thetrials under his direction?
Is it A 6, B 9, C 11, or D 12?
So in checking the answers, themost popular one was B 9
Swimmers.
75% of you went with that oneand the other 25% thought it was
A6.
Turns out, the correct answeris actually D 12 Swimmers.
(32:26):
Coach Morrison had fourathletes qualify in 2021, five
in 2016, and three in 2012.
And I have a feeling he couldbe adding to that total in the
next couple of years as ElAhabian continues to develop.
Okay, now it's time for ourquestion for this episode.
As of right now, there are nineNavy lacrosse players who have
scored over 150 points in theircareers.
How many of them came from that2004 team that made it to the
(32:48):
NCAA Championship game?
Was it A 1, B 2, C 3, or D 4?
And, by the way, you get extracredit if you come up with the
name or names of the players.
Give that some thought and youcan answer by replying to the
poll question on the Navy SportsNation group Facebook page.
Now let's wrap things up byseeing how our two athletes on
(33:09):
the Midwatch finished up theirseasons.
Let's go ahead and start withZanai
Barnett- Gay of the women'sbasketball team.
From about the fourth game ofthe season, when she scored 29
points against Binghamton, youkind of got the feeling that she
was a pretty special player.
- Gay helped spark a turnaroundin the program that saw the
mids go from 1-17 in the PatriotLeague to 9-9, while advancing
to the quarterfinals of thePatriot League tournament, and
(33:30):
that game against Colgate was indoubt till the end.
Barnett Gay finished up herfirst year as a team leader in
points, averaging 18.2 a game,and the same goes for rebounds,
where she pulled down 6.2 percontest.
And she was no slouch ondefense either, coming up with a
total of 89 steals on theseason.
That was also a team high.
The women's basketball teamwill only be losing three
seniors, so Coach Taylor willhave a strong court to build
(33:51):
upon for next year.
Barnett Gay and her classmateKyah Smith give the Mids one of
the most talented backcourts inthe league, so I am very excited
to see how this team continuesto develop over the next few
years.
Now let's move on to AustinBenigni from the men's
basketball team.
What I like to buy the most isthe way he always found a way to
impact the game.
Benini was the only player toaverage double digits on the
season, putting up 17 per game.
(34:12):
He's got a good outside shot,but his strength was definitely
creating off the dribble andgetting to the rim, and usually
he'd wind up making the basketgetting fouled or both.
Coach DeChellis also put apretty young team on the court
this year.
His starting lineup in the twoPatriot League tournament games
consisted of a freshman, threesophomores, including Benigni
and a junior.
So based on how much theydeveloped throughout the year, I
(34:34):
expect to see more good thingsin 2025.
And finally, I wanted to giveyou all a heads up with respect
to the two athletes who will betracking in the spring.
For the women, it will be EmilyMessinese.
She is a midfielder on thelacrosse team and she's off to a
very strong start.
The Navy offense has been hitby a couple of really big
injuries early on.
Both Eva Jovino and Lili Dentonare out for the year, so
(34:56):
Messinese has become an evenbigger focal point when the Mids
have the ball.
So far, she's the team leaderin points, with 29 on 24 goals
and five assists, and in the winover Jacksonville this past
weekend.
She scored three goals andassisted on two more to finish
with five points.
The Mids head into theirPatriot League schedule with a
6-1 record and they are ranked18th in the country For the men.
We'll be following Brock Murthafrom the baseball team.
He is a sophomore from Saville,new York.
(35:18):
Murtha plays infield and healso pitches.
What's most interesting here isthat he started his career at
Notre Dame and decided totransfer to Navy last year, and
I have a feeling Ristano mightmight have had something to do
with that, because he was thepitching coach for the Irish
during Murtha's freshman year.
Anyway, like I said, mertha isprimarily an infielder and he
currently leads the Mids inhitting, with a 400 average on
55 at bats.
His on base percentage isnearly 57%.
(35:41):
Mertha also leads the team insteals and is second in RBIs.
The Mids are currently 8 and 8and they start their Patriot
League schedule this weekendwith a four game series against
Bucknell.
So be sure to stay tuned as wetrack Brock Murtha's progress
throughout the rest of the year.
That's going to do it for thisedition of Navy Sports Central.
Thank you all so much forjoining us Now.
If you like what you've heard.
(36:01):
Please be sure to hit thatfollow button wherever you get
your podcast and remember to getthe word to all the other Navy
fans out there.
Our question of the daycontinues to be a show favorite.
You can get in on that byjoining the Navy Sports Nation
group Facebook page and givingyour answer to this week's
question.
I will pin it to the top so youdon't miss it.
And just a quick reminder theviews expressed on Navy Sports
Central are my own and do notreflect those of the US Naval
(36:23):
Academy or Navy Athletics.
By the way, the music used inNavy Sports Central comes to you
courtesy of Audio Jungle.
This is a great site forpurchasing the rights to use the
music from thousands of artistsaround the world, and those
featured in the podcast will becredited in our show notes.
Talk to you soon, everybody.
Until next time.
This is Karl Darden.
Go Navy! Beat Army!
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