May 14, 2006

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Georgetown Head Coach Dave Urick

"I thought that this game would be pretty much what you saw. I thought it was going to be a very close game, that it would come down to a couple of goals. I thought navy was extremely well-prepared for us, and that doesn't surprise me. They're an extremely well-coached team and they play hard. We tried to emphasize to our guys before and during the game, they certainly don't have a monopoly on that style of play. It wasn't great lacrosse, from my standpoint, watching us play, even when we got back in the game. We got up on them a little, we still weren't playing all that well, but we were playing hard. Our guys were pretty persistent and we try to emphasize those things as much as anything else, to play hard and be very persistent. I thought we rode pretty well. There weren't a lot of times where we turned the ball over on the ride, but we made them work hard to get it out. I think they had a number of, at least one or two, if not more, violations where they didn't get it out in 20 seconds or they might have gotten a 10-second call, and that's a tribute to guys hustling and riding very hard, and that's something our attackmen do very well. They hear it from us early in the year, if they don't ride, they don't play. They take that to heart.

"Guys like Trevor Casey and Brendan (Cannon), as a good player as Brendan is with the ball in his stick, he works very hard on the ride. Sometimes a little too hard. He smacks people once in a while. He's an interesting young man. You see this gray hair, a number of them are directly attributed to Brendan Cannon. He's a bottom-line guy. You've got to check him out at the end of the game and see exactly what he's done. He can be exasperating at times, but he can be an awfully good lacrosse player at times. We got a little bit of both today. We weren't playing great lacrosse today, we were just playing hard."

On face-offs...
"Christiaan (Trunz) has done a great job for us all year. The one game, against Loyola, when we didn't face-off well at all, we got beat. He's been able to be very consistent for us all year. He's a little under the weather. I was worried how much we could use him during the game. I thought he did a great job of adjusting after their guy, Wallace, who can generate fast breaks out of there. There are a number of things we didn't do well today, but we played hard and played the full 60 minutes. That as much as anything else, got it done. We had some guys step up for us, Matt McBride and that unit, we call it the Gray midfield, they played well today. And we had some another midfield, (Dan) D'Agnes and these other guys, we call it the Gold midfield, That's a good sign from my standpoint.

On Mike White...
"It's a tough thing. Mike's a great competitor and he's had a great year for us. Mike and Dave (Paolisso), much to my surprise, opted to come back and play as a fifth year. They decided they wanted to play another year of lacrosse. What they add to this team, from an intangible and leadership standpoint, is really pretty impressive. Unfortunately for Mike, he's going to have to watch, but he's been a bit part of what we've done this year."

On Dave Paolisso...
"Dave wasn't playing well in the first half. We were scratching our heads during that delay. What Navy does very well, a lot of teams slide real early. Navy slides early, but the initial defender, he gets what we call the trail check, he allows himself to get behind the guy because the slide is coming, and we saw it on film, and they got it a few times. We weren't doing back flips about it. That's the persistent thing. There isn't a more persistent guy on our team than Peter Cannon. He's the epitome of that. That whole midfield, we get a lot of miles out of those guys."

Junior middie Christiaan Trunz

On face-offs with William Wallace
"I think when you're facing guys like William Wallace that are excellent face-off guys, it's easy for them to get in a rhythm. I think he got in a bit of a rhythm in the first quarter so I had to change up from the clamp to get him out of being so comfortable and using his clamp. Once that that happened and he started thinking a little bit and once he started changing up what he did, then I was able to go back to my clamp and take advantage of it."

On getting ball to the wings...
"That's a strategy we use, and one we used against Penn State, and we were successful at it. Guys like Reyn . and Rob Lemos, they add another presence on the face-off and it's very successful for us."

Senior defender Reyn Garnett

On the weather delay...
"It was fine. We knew the weather was going to be bad all week and every single time we've played Navy in the last four years, it's rained or snowed. We went back to the locker room and hung out. It was fine. We wanted to make sure we came out ready and strong. Unfortunately, they got a goal right away, but it didn't set us back at all."

Sophomore Andrew Baird

On his last goal...
"The play had kind of broken down and they started sliding. The guy came at me and I took a chance and ducked by him. It all happened so quickly, I looked up and it was in."

On Navy's pressure...
"The pressure they put on, it helped us, we got a lot of good shots off the dodge. So when they would press out, we were able to beat them They have very, very good defensemen who forced us to take some shots when we could have gotten better ones. Other than that, the pressure wasn't too bad, but it did help us a little bit."

Sophomore goalie Miles Kass

On Navy's close shots in the fourth quarter...
"In the fourth quarter, everything kind of got meshed together. In general, they were able to capitalize when we failed to slide or split too quickly. Looking back on it, I thought their shots weren't overwhelming with the number of shots in tight. I felt as a whole our defense, especially in the fourth quarter, buckled down and played really well. There were some shots, like the one Ian (Dingman) took, poor angle shots, and I think our defense did very well in not allowing them to get anything right in front of the net."

On possession...
"I think part of that has to do with Coach Urick stressing for us to get to our poles and midfielders. We have a lot of team speed and we can't utilize that if I'm not throwing it up the field. That's one of the things we've pressed upon myself and the rest of the defense, is getting it up the field. We're very successful in transition because we have such fast midfielders."

On how he felt...
"Composure. It's a long game. I think the first three goals happened in the first six minutes. You still have a lot of time left and you don't want to shoot yourselves in the foot by concentrating on the first six minutes. We had to realize that we had to make some corrections and once we did, we were able to limit those chances."

Navy Head Coach Richie Meade

"I thought it was the kind of game that we thought it was going to be. There were some critical plays in the fourth quarter obviously that were going to determine the outcome of the game. Right at the end when the score was tied we two chances to score and we didn't then the momentum shifts and they got the goal lead and took the momentum. I thought we did a good job at trying to get the ball back a couple of times but we couldn't do much with it once we got it. There were some defense lapses that we had in the third quarter. We gave them too many chances every time we got the lead we couldn't extend it and that is a credit to Georgetown. They are tough team and very physical and they had it at the end and we didn't. It was a very hard fought game. It was disappointing for us to lose, but I thought we played hard and accounted well for ourselves."

On the clearing game
"The weather was not a factor. What they were doing was coming off one of our attackmen and we struggled a little bit finding the guy at first. It was a little different than how we had practiced and I thought we adjusted well and we got the ball deep right at the end of the half, we had a 3-on-2 and didn't convert. It would have sent us in 5-2. That was a big play in the game. After that I thought we did okay, it was a lot of throwing and catching. I thought we did better in the second half than in the first half. It wasn't anything that was a surprise to us. It was just that we didn't execute and I don't think the weather had anything to do with it, they seemed to clear it pretty well."

On face-offs
"I thought the two guys on the wing were very physical and that is why they are there. I thought that William did a good job, they just popped it out a couple of times and might have played a little niftier than us. Their guys are a little more experienced, we had some younger guys out there."

On the man-down goal by Georgetown as the turning point
"I thought the third quarter was going the way we hoped. We had gotten out, we were playing pretty well. We got them to foul us. I thought we tried to jam the ball inside, but we could have been more patient there. We weren't supposed to press in that situation, but we went out and pressed #21 and he saw that opportunity. It was a good play on his part. It was something we shouldn't have let happen."

On Georgetown
"I credit Georgetown a lot. One of the intangible things here is that they have been in exams all week. They just finished on Friday, which is a very difficult thing to do. We basically had four days of preparation where we weren't in exams. They should get a lot of credit for that. That is a very tough thing to do and they came out and played a quality for sixty minutes. In the first quarter I thought they were a little rusty."

On the seniors
"As far as this group is concerned (Russell, S. Looney, Birsner), I just told the guys in the locker room that when they got here in 2003 as plebes, our program wasn't what it is now. There was a time back in the '80's when people would fear playing Navy, I think that kind of respect went away for a couple of years and since these guys got here and through the course of their careers we've gotten that back a little bit. We've played against the best teams in the country very competitively. I don't want to sound arrogant or pompous but the Naval Academy is a very difficult place to go to school and for these guys to play as consistently as they have over the four years they have been here, I think they should get a lot of credit for that."

On Steve Looney
"Physical courage is a quality in the military that is very important in leadership and Steve stepped to the plate today. We are all very grateful for it, but that is what we expected from Steven Looney."

Senior goalkeeper Matt Russell

On playing last game for Navy
"Its tough. They three of us have been together for five years (Russell, S. Looney, Birsner), since prep school. The guys have worked hard the whole time. You never want it to end like this, but to Georgetown's credit, they played a better game than us today. That is something we have to live we. Now we get to do amazing things for the military. In that aspect, I think they guys are excited. Every single one of the guys on our team hates losing and I think that is why we have been so successful."

Senior attack Jon Birsner

On early lead
"We won the face-offs in the first quarter and its all about possessions. We were getting a lot more possessions than them and were taking advantage of it. We were coming up with a lot of loose balls and pushing it and it was working well. We tried inverting them and it was working well. We let it get away and we didn't play as patient as we needed to. I think longer possessions would have helped a lot."

Senior Steve Looney

On playing
"It was great to be back out there. A few weeks ago I wasn't sure if I would ever play again. I had a chance today and it was great."