University of North Carolina Athletics
UNC Heads To Big City Classic To Face Hopkins
March 31, 2011 | Men's Lacrosse
March 31, 2011
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TAR HEELS HEAD TO MEADOWLANDS TO MEET JOHNS HOPKINS: North Carolina will be headed to the Meadowlands for the first weekend in April for the third year in a row as the Tar Heels meet Johns Hopkins in the Konica Minolta Big City Classic Sunday at 4 p.m. at the New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The game will be nationally televised on ESPNU with Eamon McAnaney doing the play by play and Quint Kessenich serving as the color analyst. The No. 4-ranked Tar Heels (7-2, ACC 1-1) will look to build on the momentum of back-to-back wins over Dartmouth and Maryland as they prepare to meet the Blue Jays (6-2), who are coming off a 12-11 victory over second-ranked Virginia at Homewood Field. This is the third straight year the Tar Heels have played in the Big City Classic. Two years ago at the old Meadowlands Stadium the Tar Heels fell 12-11 to Virginia. A year ago, UNC lost to the Cavaliers 7-5 in the first Big City Classic played in the new stadium. A crowd of over 25,000 fans was on hand for last year's matchup.
THE BASICS OF THE MATCHUP:
The Tar Heels enter the game ranked No. 4 in the USILA coaches poll and No. 5 in the Inside Lacrosse Nike media poll. Johns Hopkins is ranked No. 5 in the USILA coaches poll and No. 6 in the Inside Lacrosse Nike media poll. UNC is 7-2 and on a two-game winning streak after beating Dartmouth 12-7 and Maryland 11-6 last week. UNC opened with a win over Robert Morris 14-11 before losing at Ohio State 13-8 after being tied at the half with the Buckeyes. A four-game winning streak followed with a come-from-behind win over Navy 10-8, a 13-9 victory over UMBC, a decisive 12-6 win over #9 Penn and a 9-5 victory at #7 Princeton. The Heels then dropped their ACC opener to Duke 14-9 before beating Dartmouth and Maryland before national TV audiences. Johns Hopkins at 6-2 is one of the hottest teams in the country right now. The Blue Jays opened with road wins at Towson 10-6 and Delaware 18-5 before hosting three straight games at Homewood Field. The Hop beat Siena 16-6 before losing to Princeton 8-3 and then felling Manhattan 10-3. Since then Hopkins beat UMBC 16-5 at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, fell at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse in double overtime 5-4 against the top-ranked Orangemen and then pulled off the upset of #2 Virginia 12-11 last Saturday at Homewood Field.THE ALL-TIME SERIES WITH THE BLUE JAYS: The Tar Heels and the Blue Jays will be facing each other for the 40th time on Sunday with Johns Hopkins holding a 23-16 edge in the series. The series has been historically marked by long winning streaks for both teams. After the initial meeting in the 1977 NCAA Tournament quarterfinals will resulted in a 16-9 win for the Blue Jays, the Tar Heels won the next four in a row, including victories in the NCAA championship games in 1981 and 1982. Hopkins then won three in a row and four of the next six with the Tar Heels beating the Blue Jays 10-9 in the NCAA semifinals in 1986 en route to their third of four national championships. Beginning in 1987 the series has been nothing but winning streaks. Hopkins won five in a row from 1987-89. UNC won six in a row from 1990-94. Hopkins then won 13 in a row from 1995-2006. The Tar Heels are currently on a four-game winning streak in the series. That streak started with a major upset by UNC at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill in 2007 as the Heels won 13-10 just a year after going 4-10. Carolina has won the past two meetings at Homewood Field -- by five goals in 2008 and four goals in 2010. The most exciting game in the recent series came in 2009 at Fetzer Field in Chapel Hill. It was a slugfest in a driving rainstorm in a nationally televised ESPNU game. Hopkins rallied late to force overtime at 9-9 and had the opening possession of overtime before Ryan Flanagan caused a turnover and the Heels came up with the ball. UNC then scored on its opening possession of overtime with Billy Bitter feeding Sean DeLaney for the winning goal, making the final 10-9.
LAST YEAR'S MEETING BETWEEN THE TWO TEAMS: Junior All-America attackman Billy Bitter returned to the starting lineup to score four goals and lead the No. 3 North Carolina men's lacrosse team to an 11-7 victory over No. 14 Johns Hopkins before a crowd of 4,012 at Homewood Field on April 3, 2010. The Tar Heels improved to 10-0 with their fifth road victory of the season, the first time they had started a season with 10 successive wins since the 1991 team went 16-0 en route to winning the school's last national championship. UNC's defense was stellar with Chris Madalon making nine saves while allowing only seven goals. The unit as a whole limited the Blue Jays to seven goals, the fewest Hopkins had scored against Carolina at Homewood Field since 1988 in a 6-5 Johns Hopkins win. Bitter's four goals matched his 2010 season high that he had in UNC's 13-7 win at Duke on March 10, 2010. He extended his point scoring streak to 27 games in a row with his effort. He led a balanced scored attack which saw seven other Tar Heels score one goal each, including the first career goals for freshmen midfielders Cam Wood and Ian Braddish. Jimmy Dunster, Gavin Petracca, Marcus Holman, Michael Burns and Chris Layne also scored goals for the Tar Heels in the win. Dunster, Petracca, Holman and defenseman Milton Lyles all had a single assist each for the Tar Heels.
CAROLINA'S DOUBLE DIGIT SCORING GAMES:
UNC has scored at least 10 goals in a game in 25 of its last 33 contests dating back to a 10-9 overtime win against Johns Hopkins on March 28, 2009. UNC is 22-3 in those 25 games, including 17-0 over the past two seasons. The last loss UNC suffered when scoring 10 or more goals came against Duke in the 2009 NCAA quarterfinals.THE FETZER FIELD WINNING STREAK COMES TO AN END:
Duke's 14-9 win on March 17, 2011 ended the Tar Heels' 17-game Fetzer Field winning streak. Prior to the loss, UNC had not lost a game at Fetzer Field since Joe Breschi became Carolina's head coach in 2009, a streak which had started with a win over Robert Morris in the `09 season opener. Since the start of his UNC coaching career, Carolina's only three home losses under Breschi include two games played in 2009 -- both against Duke -- but both played at Kenan Stadium -- and then the March 17 loss to Duke at Fetzer Field. Prior to the setback against the Blue Devils, Carolina's last loss at Fetzer Field had came on May 10, 2008, an 8-7 NCAA Tournament first round loss to Navy. UNC then won 17 straight at Fetzer Field. Carolina had also won 12 straight home games overall, regardless of Chapel Hill venue, since losing 15-13 to Duke at Kenan Stadium on April 26, 2009. With the win over Dartmouth on March 22, 2011, UNC is now 18-1 under head coach Joe Breschi at Fetzer Field and 21-3 in home games overall (including games played at Kenan Stadium, Henry Stadium and Navy Field).
THE LAST TIME OUT FOR THE TAR HEELS:
North Carolina's sixth-ranked men's lacrosse team got seven goals and seven assists from freshmen and Steven Rastivo made a career-high 13 saves to power the Tar Heels to a 11-6 come-from-behind victory over fifth-ranked Maryland at Capital One Field at Byrd Stadium on March 26, 2011. The victory was the first for the Tar Heels in College Park since 2003 and only the second win for UNC at Maryland since 1993. The Tar Heels improved to 7-2 overall and 1-1 in the ACC before a crowd of 3,176 fans and a national television audience on ESPNU. Maryland saw its four-game winning streak end as the Terps fell to 6-2 overall and 0-2 in the ACC. UNC's kiddie corps led the way offensively with seven of UNC's 11 goals while seven of eight assists came from the freshman class as well. Attackman Nicky Galasso led the way with a career-high seven points on two goals and a personal best five assists. Freshman attackman Pat Foster made his first career start and had three goals and an assist. Junior Jimmy Dunster scored twice, bringing his goal total to six in the past two games, while freshman Duncan Hutchins and sophomore Marcus Holman each had a goal and an assist. Junior long-stick midfielder Mark Staines and freshman Ryan Creighton also scored goals for Carolina.
A PENCHANT FOR COMEBACKS:
North Carolina has fallen behind by two or more goals in the first half of four of their seven victories this season. The Tar Heels have trailed Maryland by four goals, Navy and Princeton by three goals and Dartmouth by two goals in the first half of all of those games but in each case has either tied the game by halftime or pulled ahead at intermission en route to recording victories. UNC was tied with both Robert Morris and UMBC in the second quarter of those games but pulled away for solid halftime leads and were never headed. The 12-6 win over Penn was the only wire-to-wire win for UNC as the Heels jumped out to a 6-1 lead in that game after one quarter. In its two losses, the Tar Heels were down to Duke for pretty much the whole game, tying it briefly only once at 1-1. The Tar Heels surrendered a 5-2 second quarter lead to Ohio State in Columbus, being outscored 8-1 and eventually losing 13-8.DEFENSE STEPPING UP FOR THE TAR HEELS:
North Carolina's veteran defense led by close defensemen Ryan Flanagan, Charlie McComas and Kevin Piegare, long-stick midfielder Mark Staines and short-stick defensive midfielders Michael Burns and Chris Hunt has responded well since giving up double digits goals in the first two games of the season -- 11 to Robert Morris and 13 to Ohio State. In the past seven games, UNC has held opponents to single digits six times with the only exception a 14-9 loss to Duke. Of those six games, UNC has held opponents to seven or fewer goals four times.
