When No. 1 Salisbury and No. 3 Stevenson meet on Saturday at 1 p.m. in the championship final of the Capital Athletic Conference Tournament at Sea Gulls Stadium in Salisbury, these teams will have faced each other five times in less than two full seasons.
Much of that has to do with occupying space in the same conference, but since both schools are in the South region, they could meet for a sixth time in the NCAA Tournament. In fact, Salisbury coach Jim Berkman is banking on that.
"The reality of the situation is that unless somebody stumbles, this is probably going to be the fifth of six times this year," he said. "I don't see any way around it, that either in the quarterfinals or semifinals [of the NCAA Tournament] and if both teams keep playing to the level that they've played all year, they're on a collision course to meet for a sixth time. The game probably wasn't drawn up to be that way, the physical nature in terms of having to play a team three times in a season. But it is what it is, and I don't see that going away in the future. I see two teams that are going to be here and be on the national scene. The reality of the situation is, we're in the same conference, and we're probably going to end up playing each other two or three times a year for probably a while."
Mustangs coach Paul Cantabene also sounded resigned to the fact of multiple meetings in a single year. But he also said the team looked forward to challenging a program as storied as the Sea Gulls'.
"They're what we want to be," he said. "They're the top program in Division III and we want to be there. We don't think we're too far behind. We have great respect for what they do, but we do meet a lot. I don't think we're meant to meet this many times in college lacrosse, but that's what we have to do."