EMMITSBURG — Georgetown's Nick Marrocco and Mount St. Mary's Matt Vierheller met for the first time Wednesday, but the hope for both programs is that the precocious goalkeepers will be around for a while.
The freshmen anchored their respective teams' defensive efforts and didn't disappoint. Marrocco made a game-high 15 saves in the Hoyas' 11-5 victory at Waldron Family Stadium, while Vierheller stopped 12 shots.
Georgetown coach Kevin Warne took note of the unusual appearance of two rookie goalies starting in the same game.
"It will probably be neat to watch them in a couple years when they get older," said Warne, a former assistant coach at Maryland. "They have a freshman and we have a freshman, but at the end of the day, you're still playing lacrosse. I think both guys will see more shots and get better and better as time goes on. That's probably [Mount St. Mary's] coach [Tom] Gravante's goal with his guy and that's certainly ours with Nick in the cage for us."
Said Gravante: "That is pretty interesting and great for both programs. We can run with those guys for the next four years and it will be fun to watch them develop."
After the game, both Vierheller and Marrocco met for the first time during the postgame handshake and said they had only heard of the other.
"He played really well," Vierheller said of Marrocco. "It was a good game."
Said Marrocco: "He played really well. It's awesome. It's good to see it."
Circling back to "Three Things to Watch" …
1) The other freshman goalie. We've already discussed Marrocco, but one note about his development is that he is being coached by Jack Runkel, the former Loyola Maryland goalkeeper who serves as a volunteer assistant coach for the Hoyas. In four years with the Greyhounds (three as a starter), Runkel won 42 games, lost seven, and posted a 7.71 goals-against average and a .569 save percentage.
"I'll give all the credit to Jack Runkel," Warne said with regards to Marrocco's development, which includes a 17-save outing in a win against Hofstra. "He's done an awesome job developing Nick, just giving him confidence and just tweaking some of the things, and I think Nick has realized that college shots are a lot different from high school shots. I think people have started to scout him, and he's done a good job. He comes in and watches film, get extra shots, and is starting to understand what we're doing defensively, and that certainly will progress as the season goes on."
2) The other faceoff guys. Georgetown fifth-year senior and Harvard transfer Gabriel Mendola won 11 of 20 draws and collected a game-best 11 ground balls, but it wasn't easy. Senior Nick Haley, who had entered the game having won just 36.7 percent (11 of 30) of his faceoffs, won nine of the 19 draws he took against Mendola. Haley had even won seven of 10 faceoffs in the first half, but the Mountaineers could not take advantage of the Archbishop Spalding graduate's effort.
"That was pretty good," Gravante said of Haley's performance. "That was what we hoped for. The kid that plays for them, No. 39, he's a pretty special kid. He's torn up a lot of teams already. So we were right there in the battle with him, and there were a couple times when we had the ball and they just made a tough play and took it from us."
3) The other offense. The Hoyas had ranked fourth in Division I in man-up offense, converting 63.6 percent (7 of 11) of their extra-man opportunities. But they went just 1-for-3 against Mount St. Mary's, and Gravante credited associate head coach and defensive coordinator Tim McIntee with reinforcing a man-down defense that killed just 7 of 13 chances before Wednesday.
"That's really the strength of our team in some sense, where our maturity is," Gravante said. "Coach McIntee has done a great job of really organizing those guys and getting them to play as I know they could, especially the three base defensemen. They're all seniors, and they're playing real tough."