Greyhounds Edge Lakers in Heart-Pounding Lacrosse Thriller, 12-11

Gordie Koerber scored three second-half goals, including the one that gave the Greyhounds the lead for good, in a 12-11 Gilman win at Boys’ Latin on Tuesday.

“I give all the credit to my defense and my middies—their play between the lines got me those goals,” Koerber said after the game.

That could not have been more evident than on the play that gave the Greyhounds the lead, which they would never relinquish.

The goal, the second in a four-goal Greyhound run at the beginning of the fourth quarter, started when Gilman goalie Palmer Murray lofted a clear pass up field to midfielder Jake Matthai. Matthai spotted Koerber, who was open on the crease, and Koerber dented the Laker net with a bounce shot that hit the mark about mid-way up on the left.

“I’m really excited to see some of our kids step up and make some plays,” Gilman coach Brooks Matthews said in a post-game interview.

At the half, when the score was knotted at five, Matthews spoke individually to a couple of players and then addressed the team.

“I said, we’ve talked about a couple of things that we need to do—we’re seeing what we expected from them—and we just need to do a few things a little bit better,” Matthews said.

For Laker coach Bob Shriver, the keys were the inability to build more than a one-goal margin, loss of some key face-offs, and a failure to clear the ball.

“You give a team like them too many second chances and they will come back and bite you in the rear end,” Shriver said.

The game was back and forth throughout the first three quarters, when the Lakers took a 9-8 lead into the fourth.

Yet four unanswered goals within two and a half minutes at the start of the final quarter gave the Greyhounds enough of a margin to hold off the late-charging Lakers.

Ryan Tucker started Gilman’s fourth-quarter run with an unassisted score on a bounce shot from seven yards, after charging up the right side of the field from about 25 yards out at the 11:00 mark.

Koerber’s goal that gave the Greyhounds the lead for good came less than 30 second later.

The margin widened to two when Tucker fed Riley DeSmit. The play started when the senior midfielder, running up the right side of the field, dished off to DeSmit, who was open on top of the crease.  Boys’ Latin goalie Adam Davey charged DeSmith, who deked Davey and hit the open net.

The run ended at the 8:32 mark when senior attackman Conor Doyle found Matthai, who was open on the right side about 10 yards out.

Down 12-9, Boys’ Latin drew one goal closer on an extra-man goal by Shack Stanwick, off a feed from his older brother Wells Stanwick. Shack, about three yards out on the left front of the crease, converted the pass that came from center behind with 4:11 left to play.

Then, with 1:38 left in the game, Stephen Luck charged the Greyhound goal from the right side, took a pass from Ben Pridemore and scored from seven yards.

The game opened with Boy’s Latin quickly jumping on the scoreboard when Trevor Kiddy scored just 34 seconds into the game. Max Greene tied the score for Gilman at the 6:24 mark, off an assist from Justin George. Less than a minute later, Max Cooke gave BL the lead with an unassisted score at 5:35. Gilman scored two unassisted goals, one by Tucker and the other by Garrett Paglia, to grab a 4-3 lead going into the second quarter.

The Lakers started with two goals, the first when Shack Stanwick fed brother Wells Stanwick 71 seconds into the second quarter. Colin Heacock then scored unassisted to give BL a 4-3 lead. Gilman’s Doyle responded with two unassisted goals, one at 4:17 and the second at 3:12. Then, with just seven seconds on the clock, Michael Lynch took a pass from Wells Stanwick to send both teams to half at five-all.

The third quarter featured a series of goals where Boys' Latin would grab a lead, only to see Gilman tie the score.

It started less than a minute into the quarter when Greg Pyke took a Wells Stanwick feed to give the Lakers a 6-5 lead. Gilman’s Koerber, off a pass from Cotter Brown, tied the game at the 7:50 mark. BL regained the lead when Luck converted a Shack Stanwick feed from seven yards out with 7:01 left. Paglia responded for Gilman with an unassisted goal, dodging a Laker defender while working his way up the left side toward the center of the attack area at 6:25.

It was advantage BL when Wells Stanwick fed Shack Stanwick, who was open on the right side from about 18 yards with four minutes left. The game was again knotted less than two minutes later when Koerber scored his second goal of the quarter, this time from 10 yards out off a feed from Doyle. Lakers' Pridemore hit the net with a little over a minute left to give Boys' Latin a 9-8 lead that lasted for the balance of the quarter.

“Obviously, we were very efficient when we had the ball,” Shriver said. “Give them credit—they chased us down riding a bunch. That is how they play—they chase you all over the field, and we didn’t handle it as well as we could have.”

For Gilman’s Matthews, the win gives the team control of its destiny.

“We’re in control of what happens to us going forward,” Matthews said of the positioning of the pending playoffs. “This win helps us with that.”

Koerber agreed.

“We’ve got to win out, we have to stay strong and go hard in the playoffs,” he said.

Gilman, 9-5 overall and 7-4 in MIAA A conference play, has two regular-season games remaining: at Archbishop Spaulding on Friday and home against Severn on May 10.

The loss drops Boys’ Latin to 5-6 in the MIAA A conference and 8-7 overall.