The University of Denver men’s lacrosse team suffered their first loss on Saturday against No. 4 University of North Carolina. Coming into the match with the Tar Heels, the Pioneers were undefeated, and have featured star performances from many members on the roster. Although this loss serves as the first true test of adversity, Denver’s freshman attacker Ethan Walker continued to impress.
“Ethan is a great lacrosse player,” said head coach Bill Tierney. “We don’t even think of him as a freshman, it’s kind of silly, because he’s so poised and he’s so talented.”
Walker put up four points in DU’s game against UNC, with three goals and one assist. This is the fourth time that Walker has had four or more points in a game. The only time he hasn’t was against Canisius College, where he still managed to bolster one goal and one assist.
“I thought today he did what he had to do. In certain regards you can tell that he’s still young out there,” said Tierney. “Every game he sees, he is seeing something new. As I mentioned before Carolina plays a little bit of different man-to-man and zone defense, so it’s the first time he’s seen that, but he responds.”
Along with Walker, teammate Connor Cannizzaro continued his point streak, which is now at the total of 46 games. Even though the Pioneers displayed all of this offensive talent, they were still stunted by Tar Heels goalie Brian Balkam, who had 17 saves.
“When you see him save the high ones and the low ones; that’s when things get a little like, ok what do you want us to do now,” said Tierney. “Interestingly enough, it just goes to show you that practice doesn’t mean anything when it comes to games. Yesterday, we were shooting the lights out in practice. I don’t know if anyone could have stopped them. He did today. That’s just credit to him.”
Prior to the game against the Tar Heels, Denver was ranked as the No.1 team in the nation. Since their defeat, they have fallen to No.5, which coincidentally is one spot behind North Carolina. The top teams in men’s college lacrosse have exchanged blows since the start of the season, which has caused the ranking system a bit of trouble.
“This year is going to be crazy,” said Tierney. “I’m not a big compare score guy, but you can’t help but look at what has happened just in two weeks. These guys get beat up by Hopkins, Hopkins got beat up by Princeton and we get beat up by these guys. Where does that put us?”
Although the future of the Pioneers remains uncertain, this much is true: their sophomore goaltender Alex Ready has only lost four games in his career, their face off specialist Trevor Baptiste is the most dominate FOGO in the nation and they have two of the hottest offensive player in the game with Cannizzaro and Walker. With this in mind, the light at the tunnel still remains.
“[Walker] is a great kid; he works his tail off every week in practice,” said Tierney. “I don’t want to say that he’s going to be a great [player], because he already is.”
