In the month of March, Loyola men’s lacrosse’s games have all been held at home: five straight games at Ridley. Wrapping up their home stand this past weekend, the Greyhounds lost their eighth game of the season after a hard-fought battle against the Georgetown Bulldogs, but they won their ninth game after a down-to-the-wire match against Bucknell. 

Loyola concluded their home stand at three wins and two losses, now currently holding a 5-4 record in this year’s campaign and a 2-1 Patriot League record, which is a tie with Navy for second in the conference behind Boston University.

In the first of the two games that Loyola played last week, Georgetown was dominant with a clean lead in the beginning that Loyola convincingly came back from. After a tough second quarter, even a well-fought second half couldn’t bring it back.

The game started out rough for the Greyhounds. Despite being the dominant team in terms of face offs, the Bulldogs put up a harder defense and were able to take a lot of turnovers, pulling a 0-3 lead by the first timeout with 6:52 left in the first quarter. Loyola did not simply take the hit, though. They bounced back with a brace from attackman Mason Cook ‘28 and one goal from middlefielder Brady Quinn ‘27, bringing the game to a 3-3 tie in just four and a half minutes. The game would trade saves until the very end of the quarter, where Bulldog graduate student attackman Rory Connor would score a goal, leaving the first quarter at a score of 3-4.

While Georgetown showed off a very impressive defense in the first quarter, Loyola proved that they were more than capable of competing, a fact that Loyola Head Coach Charley Toomey also made note of. 

“They go out and they score three goals, y’know. A lot of teams, they probably hang their heads. We tied it at three,” Toomey said.

Loyola shined in other areas as well. Not only were they able to fire off more shots, taking the category 11 to 8, they also dominated in face-offs 6 to 1 and ground balls 10 to 4. These statistics demonstrate close competition on the field.

The question in these games tends to come down to which team will ease off the gas first. In many sports games, that factor can be all it takes to polarize the score in one team’s favor, flipping a game on its head.

The second quarter affirmed this truth. Georgetown entered the quarter with the game’s most dominant performance. Despite four great saves by goalkeeper Max Watkinson ‘26, the Bulldogs ended up scoring five straight goals, a wave of momentum that was only stopped by a timeout from Loyola with 5:26 to go in the half. With this reset, the Greyhounds would get some much-needed time to cool off and focus on competing to the best of their ability, but so would the Bulldogs. The only Loyola goal scored in this quarter after the timeout would be Cook’s third, and the half would end with a score of 4-9, Bulldogs.

Though the Greyhounds had demonstrated the ability of going neck and neck with the Bulldogs, the lead that they let Georgetown take had the potential to loom over the rest of the game’s performance very easily.

Loyola played a great third quarter defensively, able to better match Georgetown, as exemplified by both teams only scoring one goal apiece. The two sides barely budged and rarely conceded on the defensive end.  

Toomey gave some helpful insight for many fans to better understand exactly what the changes were in the game.

“I thought that we learned a little bit about ourselves and in a sense that we can play zone. I thought that we slowed them down when we went to zone,” Toomey said.

This strategy change was not an ordinary one, though. It was a team-led strategy change, as Coach Toomey further clarified.

“I will say this: our players made an adjustment on the field. We have guys getting caught and they went to a zone. I thought that at the tail end of the second quarter which kinda ran into the third quarter we played a lot of zone tonight, and I think we gave Max [Watkinson] a chance to get some saves and to run. So we did learn some things in a positive way from this game,” Toomey said.

The impact of this defensive change would carry on through the rest of the half, as both teams would only score twice in the fourth quarter. Even though this was a defensive-minded half, it was fought at a completely even level when looking at the goals scored. The early lead Georgetown had led to a final score of 7-14, a seven-point loss stemming heavily from the second quarter.

Despite a tough loss, not only did the Greyhounds prove their potential as a real force of nature, but they also, more subtly, proved to be an effectively adaptive team that can clean out sizable defensive gaps with a solid strategy change. Team Captain and attackman Matthew Minicus ‘26 discussed the future of the team and its goals for the year.

“I mean the whole season’s still in front of us. We’re trying to win Patriot League games. Got a big one this weekend, locked in for that one,” Minicus said.

Going off of this hopeful note, Coach Toomey added a message to all of the students who support Loyola’s teams from the stands.

“We need student body to show up and help us and support us. We need really to be a tough place to play in the stands and on the field. And that’s one thing that I think every Loyola Greyhound in our locker room has really been excited to do: to play at home and to play in front of our own fans,” Toomey said.

Later, Coach Toomey would also mention the game following the Georgetown battle as a really important one in the season. That game would be the Mar. 20 match against Bucknell, an extremely high competition game that the Greyhounds would emerge victorious from with a 13-12 win.

This game, like the Georgetown one, would start with a 0-3 hole for the Greyhounds that they would wipe out with three consecutive goals, this time with a brace scored by midfielder Luke Murphy ‘26 and one goal scored by Cook. The momentum for the Greyhounds refused to stop there, though. Loyola’s Cook and midfielder Kyle McCarthy ‘28 would score two goals and one goal, respectively, before the quarter ended, with only one Bison goal conceded.

In the second quarter, Bucknell made it clear they were very much still in this game by scoring four straight goals. The streak was only offset by a much-needed goal right from the face-off by long stick midfielder Aiden Hevia ‘27.

In the third quarter, Loyola would score four goals to Bucknell’s two, bringing the score to 11-10. The game would need to be convincingly settled in a final quarter showdown, and that showdown is what the 1,100 attending fans got.

Bucknell began the final quarter by tying the game up, but the Hounds fought back with a goal from attackman Kenan Everhart ‘27, along with Minicus’s 100th career goal, becoming the 15th player in program history to score 100 or more goals in a career. These goals gave Loyola a cushion that, despite allowing a Bucknell goal in the final second, was enough to end the game with a 13-12 victory, an incredibly high competition game down to the final minutes ending in a victory for the home crowd.

With this very much needed win secured, the hype is riding strong for the Loyola men’s lacrosse team. Their next game is on Mar. 28 at Holy Cross, and their next home game against Boston University is on Saturday, Apr. 4. If you cannot make it, you can catch the Greyhounds streaming on ESPN+!