Two games in three days in February might seem a little crazy, but after No. 3 Stevenson followed Monday's 17-10 loss to top-ranked Rochester Institute of Technology with Wednesday's 13-1 rout at Commonwealth Conference foe Messiah, coach Paul Cantabene had no complaints about the quick pace.
"Anytime you can quickly turn around and play against after a loss and get a 'W,' I think that definitely helps," he said Thursday morning. "It gets your mind a little refocused. What we're trying to do is get our guys in the right mental spot, and we're trying to get a rhythm on offense. I think defensively, we're going to be just fine, but offensively, those guys need to get into a little bit more of a rhythm, and that's what we're trying to do."
Cantabene said he was particularly pleased to see the team captains and seniors set the tone in Tuesday's practice and Wednesday's game.
"I thought our guys did a great job leadership-wise, getting us ready and playing with a lot of energy," he said. "We could have gone out there and just had a lackluster effort. But we played very well, and I thought we responded well. We have a mature team. I think our guys understand how to bounce back. So I was happy with that."
As resounding as Wednesday's victory was, the setback to the Tigers continues to resonate for the Mustangs, who gave up four goals in a 3:06 span of the fourth quarter, gave up six goals in eight man-down situations, and misfired on 9 of 31 clears.
"I don't think [the Messiah win] makes up for [the RIT loss]," Cantabene said. "[The Messiah win] is a game I thought we were going to win, and we went in there and took care of business and did what we had to do. We improved on a lot of the things and mistakes that we made. We thought that in that first game, we just made a lot of mental mistakes.
"Dropped passes, failed clears, silly fouls, and we didn't play man-down [defense] very well, and we gave RIT a lot because of our mental mistakes. So we had to play mentally tougher, and yesterday was a step forward. But we still have a lot of work to do."