It took some considerable time this season, but the Hereford boys lacrosse team finally found some separation between itself and rival Towson.
The timing couldn’t have been better for the No. 15 Bulls.
Playing what coach Sal Picataggi described as the team’s most complete game, Hereford blanked Towson in the second half of Saturday’s Baltimore County championship game to pull away for an 11-5 win at US Lacrosse’s Tierney Field in Sparks for the program’s 11th crown (10 outright) in 12 seasons.
Senior goalie Nick Balducci anchored a strong defensive effort with 12 saves; sophomore faceoff specialist Connor Dunay was pivotal, and Jake Furman and Jay Bowen each scored three goals. Hereford, which needed double overtime to beat Towson, 8-7, durng the regular season, improved to 10-4, while the Generals dropped to 9-4.
“We’ve had games where our defense has really stepped up,’’ Picataggi said. “We’ve had games where our offense has been really good and [Towson is] fantastic… We really put this complete game together to beat them and by six goals – that’s a great win against a really good team.”
The Bulls’ plan was to match the Generals’ emotion and energy early and then settle in to control the flow of the game.
Midway through the second quarter, with the game tied at 4, Dunay provided the spark that helped the Bulls.
He cleanly won consecutive faceoffs against Mitch Boudreau, got up field and found teammates. He fed Furman to make it 5-4 and then fed Cole Gibbons, who scored eight seconds later to give the Bulls their first two-goal lead at 6-4 with 5:02 to play.
In the regular-season game, Bourdreau and the Generals had a decisive edge in faceoffs. On Saturday, Dunay won 11 of 19.
“Last time we played them he was getting all the clamps on me and I really buckled down this time and made sure I was getting that clamp, really rotating,” Dunay said. “I was just playing my game. I told myself I know what my potential is, I’m confident in myself and I just did it, ran down the field and looked for the open man.”
Leading 7-5 at the half, the Bulls took over with efficient possessions on offense and flawless defense.
Lass than a minute after killing a one-minute penalty early in the second half, Jack Callis scored off a feed from Jake Baldwin for an 8-5 lead with 9:57 left in the third quarter. Grafton Griffey and Gibbons scored 34 seconds apart midway through the quarter and then Bowen scored with 51 seconds to put the lead at 11-5 going into the fourth. The score stayed the same the rest of the way with the Bulls celebrating yet another title as Baltimore County’s best.
“Towards the second quarter and then really into the second half, we just stepped it up,” Balducci said. “[We] played lockdown defense, offense was keeping good possessions to take time off the clock and we just really came together and played Hereford lacrosse.”
Towson got one goal and one assist from both Grant Kuehn and Evan Jones with goalie Wilson Turner making nine saves. Coach Shawn Burke didn’t see the same Generals team he saw during the regular season.
“I saw us do some things on the field today that I haven’t seen us do and when that happens, that’s on us as a coaching staff because we obviously didn’t get through to them what the key things were,” he said.
“[It was] a little bit of everything. I saw us do things in the riding and clearing games that I’ve never seen us do, offensively same thing, and defensively we had some breakdowns that were inexcusable. And that’s on us as coaches.”
He later added: “You’re going to give up some good plays in a big game and that’s part of it, but you can’t give away things against a good team and we did way too much of that today.”
Goals: T – Kuehn, Bechdel, Dugan, Burkett, Jones; H – Furman 3, Bowen 3, Callis 2, Griffey, Gibbons 2. Assists: T – Kuehn, Jones; H – Griffey 2, Dunay 2, Baldwin 3, .Saves: T – Turner 9; H – Balducci 12. Half: H, 7-5