When Stevenson captured the NCAA Division III championship in 2013, the team could brag that it had gone 9-1 against ranked opponents. Even last year when the Mustangs failed to get out the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament, they went 6-2 against ranked opponents.
This spring has had a much different flavor. Stevenson (7-4 overall and 3-0 in the Commonwealth Conference) has dropped four of six games against ranked opponents, a trend capped by Saturday's 13-9 loss to No. 5 Lynchburg.
The setback dropped the Mustangs from No. 6 to No. 8 in the latest United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse poll and likely puts them behind the Hornets (10-2) and No. 16 Cabrini (7-5) in the race for the top two seeds in the South region of the NCAA tournament.
But coach Paul Cantabene said he isn't worried about the team's sub-.500 mark against ranked opponents.
"I'm not concerned because I think in all of those games, we had chances to win, and we just made some mistakes," he said Thursday morning. "We want to play good teams because that makes you better. ... We're looking to play great teams, and we think we're getting better and we're doing good things, and we're playing better lacrosse at the end of the year, which is most important. So I think we're playing some of our best lacrosse right now, and we're going to hopefully get better."
Stevenson rebounded from Saturday's loss to Lynchburg with a 20-2 demolition of conference rival Hood on Tuesday night. Cantabene said he was pleased with his players' attitudes before and during the contest.
"I thought the guys did a really good job of not showing any letdown from the Lynchburg loss and just going out there and playing better," he said. "I don't think we played bad in the Lynchburg game at all. I just thought we missed the plays to win the game and Lynchburg made some plays to win the game. That was really the big difference."