1 week Ago
BLOOMFIELD HILLS – It’s not often you will find the Detroit Catholic Central boys lacrosse team overly critical of a win over Brother Rice. Similarly, you won’t typically find the Warriors encouraged in a loss to the Shamrocks. But, that’s the way things seemed to play out on Tuesday, when Brother Rice nearly overcame a four-goal deficit in the fourth period before ultimately suffering a 10-9 loss to Catholic Central.
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(Rice) is always tough, but I think we are pretty tough, too,” Catholic Central coach Dave Wilson said. “It’s early in the season, so I think we will find out a lot more about ourselves in the weeks ahead. But, we’re playing winning lacrosse right now and can still get better in a lot of areas.
” Catholic Central (6-0) is coming off a Division 1 state championship in 2024, the second in program history. Brother Rice (6-2) is coming off missing the MHSAA state championship game for the first time in program history. Despite that, Tuesday marked the first time since 2018 that the Shamrocks defeated the Warriors in their first encounter of the season.
Still, Brother Rice coach Ajay Chawla likes what he is seeing from his team, especially Tuesday’s strong finish, as the Warrior players are motivated to get back to the top of the state. “I am really happy with what I see right now,” Chawla said. “We came into the season pretty young, so we needed some guys to step up, and a lot of them are.
Guys are working together and things are looking good. We are a little like the 2004 Pistons. We don’t have any superstars right now, but hopefully by the end we will have five Hall of Famers.
We have a lot of guys that have a lot of grit and work well playing together.” Both teams relied heavily on defense and goaltending for most of the first half. The score was tied 2-2 late in the second period when the Warriors had a goal negated by a crease violation.
The Rice bench received a penalty for their reaction to the call, which set up a Catholic Central man advantage that led to a go-ahead goal from senior Connor Lukas. The Shamrocks would score again seconds later on a goal from junior Ryan Dye to take a 4-2 lead into the break. CC carried that momentum into the second half, scoring the first two goals of the third to establish a 6-2 advantage.
While the offense picked up, senior goalie Matthew Cranston was dominating in net, picking up nine saves in the opening half alone. “I have a great defense to work with and I think we all came into this game really wanting to get this win,” Cranston said. “We communicated well, made a lot of good decisions and just worked well together to get stops.
” The Shamrocks led 8-4 going into the final period, a score that held for the first five minutes of the fourth until Brother Rice finally broke through with a scoring burst. The Warriors tallied three goals in about two minutes of play, two from junior Frank Baiardi and one from senior Dany Holt. “We just had to settle in a little bit.
(CC) is a good team and we have some guys in new roles that just needed to settle in,” Chawla said. “We needed to control possession in this game and we did a good job of that, we just weren’t finding the net early on. But, we were playing really well at the end.
” Rice was controlling the ball for most of the game, something Wilson was hoping he’d see change late in the contest when the Shamrocks had possessions. “It would have been nice to get some longer offensive possessions, especially in the fourth, but we kind of rushed through things and that’s not achieving our objective in those situations,” Wilson said. “(Brother Rice) was earning the ball through faceoff play and I thought we gave them a few (possessions) on ground balls that we didn’t pick up that we should have.
That just made for us spending a lot of time on defense. From there, it’s about mathematical probability that (Rice) was going to find ways to score.” After trading goals in the closing minutes, CC looked to put the game away with 24 seconds to play when senior Lachlan Moffatt scored on an empty net to make it 10-8.
However, Rice quickly scored off the faceoff, as junior Brady Salach found the net to make it 10-9. The Warriors then won the ensuing faceoff and used a timeout to set up an attempt at tying the game with only 10 seconds on the clock. Chawla went back to Salach out of the stoppage.
“Brady is a great player and he is really fast and shoots the ball well,” Chawla said. “We felt like he was the best option in that circumstance and he got a good shot off.” Photo gallery of Detroit Catholic Central vs.
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contentWindow.postMessage({message:"ready",secret:t},"*")},!1)))}(window,document); Salach did get a good look at the net, but Cranston made one final save, as the ball deflected off his leg for his 17th save of the contest to preserve the victory. “I knew I had to make a stop.
With just 10 seconds left, I wanted to take away the bottom side. He had beaten me about 30 seconds prior, but I got to see the shot. So, when I saw him dip his hands, I went low and managed to make the stop,” Cranston said.
Dye finished with four goals to lead the Shamrocks, while Moffatt scored twice, and Francisco Williams had three assists. Rice was led by three goals each from Baiardi and Theo Ley, while Salach had two. Warrior goalie Payton Fortino added 10 saves.
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