In addition to some turnover in the cage, Mount St. Mary's has tweaked its top two midfield lines.
Junior Justin Gosnell has been promoted from the second to the first line in the team's past two games. The Havre de Grace graduate, who transferred from Harford Community College where he recorded 52 goals and 34 assists last spring, has climbed over senior Clayton Wainer to join junior Evan Gormley and sophomore Ryan Lamon (Severn) on the starting midfield.
"During the Towson game, he was just getting it done, and Clay Wainer wasn't," coach Tom Gravante said Monday afternoon, referring to Gosnell's two-goal showing in a 7-4 loss to the Tigers on Feb. 27. "Clay was struggling a little bit, and we want to put our best players on the field as much as we can, especially when we get into a nip-and-tuck situation. Clay hadn't scored since VMI.
"As a former player, when your negatives are adding up more than your positives, you have to make changes. Kids either have to sit or be in a different rotation. We're happy that we have six middies that can play. Once we get going, we're probably going to take our best three guys and play them as much as we can. We were in a little bit of a run with Towson there, and Gosnell was very elusive, tough to cover."
Gosnell did not have a point in Wednesday's 11-5 loss to Georgetown, but did collect four ground balls and caused two turnovers. In Saturday's 7-6 win at Furman, he posted two goals and one assist.
Gravante said he plans to start Gosnell, Gormley and Lamon on Wednesday against Richmond (3-2) with Wainer, redshirt sophomore Robert Jones and sophomore Matty Yates on the second line. But Gravante said Wainer, a starter in 2014, could get some time with the first line as he did on Saturday when he took a pass from Lamon and scored the game-winning goal with 2:05 left in the fourth quarter.
"We had a good conversation with him," Gravante said of Wainer, who had gone three consecutive games without a point. "We let him know, 'Hey, listen, we're in support of you. Our job is to motivate and support and direct, and you need direction so that you know where you stand and we know where you stand.' So it was a good conversation with him, and he had a good practice.
"We stayed with those lines because they're balanced. But when we got down to it, toward the end of each quarter between two and five minutes left, I went with [Wainer], [Lamon], and [Gosnell]. Lamon actually had the game-winning assist on the goal. So it worked out."