University of North Carolina Athletics
From Fetzer to Finley: A Critical Look At Issues Involving UNC Olympic Sports
January 3, 2005 | Men's Lacrosse
Jan. 3, 2005
By Dave Lohse
Associate Director of Athletic Communications
The last time the University of North Carolina men's lacrosse program had a truly great season was 1993 when the team reached the NCAA championship game only to lose to Syracuse in the final 10 seconds of regulation on one of the Orangemen's seemingly patented fast break goals. For a program that won four NCAA titles in the 11-year period from 1981 through 1991, it seems hard to believe that this program is now in its 12th year of waiting for another great season as it enters the 2005 campaign.
So 2005 has to be seen as one of those years when the Tar Heels have a breakthrough opportunity. The Tar Heels seem due. They have a large and talented senior class. They have a great coach in 1983 Tar Heel alumnus John Haus who arrived in June 2000 to rebuild a UNC team that had fallen on hard times after posting losing seasons in 1997, 1998 and 1999. A fixture in the NCAA Final Four for many years, Carolina went 11 years -- from 1993 to 2004 -- without even winning a single game in the NCAA Tournament.
Last year the Tar Heels played their way into the NCAA Tournament for the first time in six years and were seeded eighth which seemed like a slap in the face to a team which had lost four regular season games by a total of five goals, including three one-goal losses to the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 teams in the nation. UNC routed Ohio State in the opening round of the tournament to set up a quarterfinal match up against top-seeded Johns Hopkins. Carolina relished the chance to play the No. 1 team. The Blue Jays, after all, had beaten UNC by only one goal in each of the three previous meetings between the two teams.
At that point, however, the tournament experience of the Blue Jays took over. UNC played with the spirit of an underdog in that NCAA quarterfinal match but Hopkins played with the poise and the confidence of a veteran team and the Blue Jays flattened Carolina 15-9. Carolina had not been whipped that soundly in over two years.
Carolina has now had eight months to stew about that loss, or, hopefully more constructively learn from it. With seven starters returning and a senior class that includes five players who have started all four years at UNC, the Tar Heels will be one of the most veteran teams in the nation in 2005. The entire attack unit returns as led by National Player of the Year candidate Jed Prossner, four-year starter Mike McCall and talented junior Ryan Blair. Four-year starters Bryant Will, a preseason first-team All-America, and Lance Zimmerman will head up the midfield. Veterans Stephen McElduff, Charley Conkling and Hayward Howard will lead the defense in front of Paul Spellman, who is starting for his fourth successive year in the goal.
Carolina's chief pre-season dilemmas are to find replacements for two starting close defensemen -- Ronnie Staines and Matt Pessagno -- and fill in the gap left by Kevin Frew who rewrote much of the school's record book in the face-off and ground ball departments.
There is certainly cause for optimism, however. Senior-laden teams are usually the most successful in the lacrosse world. Haus proved his mettle as an outstanding coach at Washington College and Johns Hopkins before returning to Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels play a killer schedule and if they react to it positively they can record the kind of victories necessary to earn them a high NCAA seed.
So will 2005 be a breakthrough year for Carolina? I'm hardly the person to ask. There is far too much Carolina Blue bias running in the blood of my veins. The coaches who voted in the preseason Face-off Magazine/Inside Lacrosse Poll picked the Tar Heels seventh, a nice safe pick but no indication they feel for sure Carolina is Final Four material.
We will learn much in the season's second week when the Tar Heels travel to Annapolis to play 2004 NCAA finalist Navy that has beaten UNC in overtime each of the last two years. A win there, in that hostile atmosphere, and we might genuinely have a story to tell.
