Saturday’s season opener for Mount St. Mary’s entailed a trip to No. 18 Delaware, which had already played four games in 2012.
The Blue Hens’ significant game experience was a note of concern for Mountaineers coach Tom Gravante, but he said the team used the extended stretch of preseason to scout Delaware three times, which may have contributed to Saturday’s 12-10 victory.
“We were their fifth game. That concerned me,” he said Monday. “Although we had three scrimmages under our belts, that’s real different from a game situation because there is obviously a heightened sense of urgency and pressure, and if the kids don’t handle that pressure in the opening game, you never know what could happen. But we put together a very solid game plan. … The kids did a great job. We wanted them to stay blue collar and work hard and stay with the game plan and be poised, and we’ll see what happens. They found themselves out on top.”
Another factor in favor of Mount St. Mary’s was that Saturday’s game was the Blue Hens’ third in eight days.
“We may have caught Delaware being tired,” Gravante acknowledged. “They were playing their third game in eight days. They had played earlier in the week at Hopkins, and it was a brawl for them. The score was 8-6, so it wasn’t a high-scoring game. But I think it was high-powered in terms of how much of a toll it took on the team. And then to turn around and play us -- and I’m not making excuses because our kids played really well -- too much in too little time can be detrimental. I just hope that doesn’t happen to us because we’re playing Tuesday [against No. 1 Virginia] and Saturday [against Towson]. We’ll do our best as a staff to rest our kids and prepare them so that we can get their highest ability on game day.”