Completed Event: Men's Lacrosse at Virginia on March 23, 2026 , Loss , 7, to, 18
Final
Men's Lacrosse
at Virginia
7
18
This Week in Dartmouth Men's Lacrosse
3/20/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Lacrosse
Thursday, March 20, 2008
HANOVER, N. H. ? The Dartmouth lacrosse team hoped to take Atlanta by storm last week but this was ridiculous.
In town to play Notre Dame in a neutral-site game at The Lovett School, the Big Green holed up at its hotel last Friday night about a mile and a half from the Georgia Dome. If you've been reading the sports pages, you know what happened next.
At about 9:30 p.m., with 2:11 remaining in overtime at a Southeastern Conference tournament basketball game between Mississippi State and Alabama, a tornado with winds in excess of 110 miles an hour struck the area. A hole was blown open in the north part of the dome, forcing the night's final game to be postponed, scattering fans back to their hotels and gluing the Dartmouth coaches ? and likely some of their players ? to the television.
“As a staff we were in front of the TV watching the updates,” Big Green coach Bill Wilson said. “There were a lot of people from our hotel who were at the basketball games and they had a lot of (digital) footage from being in the Dome.”
Flash forward to the next afternoon. While Dartmouth, Notre Dame and a large crowd of fans eager to watch the first Division I college lacrosse game ever played in Georgia were raring to go at Lovett's Conley-Oakley Field, Mother Nature wasn't cooperating just yet.
“There was a system coming through,” said Wilson, “and there was a lot of water on the field. They needed to get it ready so that we weren't playing on a really, really wet field. Even if we'd started on time, we would have had a delay in the middle of the game. They have lightning-detecting equipment and they could see the system start to turn. They were concerned about potential tornado touchdowns.”
The game was slated to start at 2 p.m. Half an hour passed. Then an hour. Then another. Despite the delay, the majority of the more than 5,000 fans who paid as much as $10 apiece to watch the game stayed around waiting for the weather to break. Their patience was rewarded, although just barely.
“Notre Dame team had to leave by a certain time because of their flight, so we almost didn't get the game in,” Wilson admitted. “By 4:15 they said we were going to play. We got the update out to our guys, went out and warmed up.”
Not surprisingly given the delay, the contest was anything but pretty in the opening minutes.
“Both teams came out a little sluggish, but certainly Notre Dame executed better than we did,” Wilson said. “Their faceoff guy won, or was a threat to win, every faceoff. They seemed to have the ball an awful lot.”
The result: a 19-7 victory for the Fighting Irish.
But the excitement wasn't over.
After a day practicing under sunny skies and a trip up I-85 to Clinton, S.C., for a 16-8 win over Presbyterian College, the Big Green returned to Atlanta to get a good night's sleep before flying back to New England.
Once again, a good night's sleep wasn't in the cards.
“There was a fire in our hotel at 1:30 in the morning,” Wilson said with a smile and a disbelieving shake of his head. “So we all had to go outside from 1:30 until about 2:30 and watch Atlanta's finest. It was quite a trip.”
Last Week in Dartmouth Lacrosse
There wasn't much Wilson could say about the loss to Notre Dame (5-1), sixth in this week's poll. The Big Green has more experience than some young teams, but on this day it didn't show.
“Playing against Notre Dame you saw a team that just didn't catch and throw very well, and turned the ball over on offense in between the lines,” Wilson said. “As a result we played a lot of defense. Coupled with the faceoffs they won, that put us on the defensive a little bit.
“They played a few more people in the midfield at the end and by the fourth quarter they were fresher than we were and that's part of the reason why the score got out of control.” Two days later, against a Presbyterian (0-8) team that has struggled in its first year as a Division I program, Dartmouth's reserves got a chance to play and showed they deserved it.
“Going into a game like that sometimes you are concerned your players aren't going to execute the way you want them to execute,” Wilson said. “A lot of times people get away from the gameplan, but you still want to be sharp and score goals within your offense, and play defense within your defense.
“We did that. We had a little bit of a slow start but a lot of guys who rotated in off the bench adhered to the offenses and defenses that we run. As a team we did a better job of executing and that was a compliment to some guys who didn't play against Notre Dame but did play against Presbyterian.
” Although the Blue Hose didn't offer the same kind of test that the Fighting Irish did, Wilson was glad for the game.
“It was a great opportunity for us to get back out there,” he said. “Otherwise you sit all week long after losing to Notre Dame by that score. To play a game on a Monday allowed us to put one game to bed and get on with the next one.”
This Week in Dartmouth Lacrosse
Dartmouth (3-2) finally gets to test the Ivy League waters with a game against Brown (3-2) in Providence, R.I., Saturday at 1 p.m.
“The second season is here,” Wilson said. “This is huge. It's a chance to compete for an Ivy League championship. You ask any Ivy League student and they'll tell you that's their No. 1 priority. Our players are really fired up to play Brown. No need to throw any fuel on the fire there. The guys are always fired up for that one.”
Although the Big Green had to battle icy field conditions in its first practice back in Hanover, Wilson didn't anticipate any problems getting his team's attention.
“Brown is coming off a 4-3 win over UMass,” Wilson said. “They have good athletes at the attack position, at the defense position. Their strength is their goalie. Jordan Burke is one of the best in the Ivy League and arguably the country.
“It's going to be a challenge to our offense to get high-percentage shots and not settle for low-percentage shots on the perimeter. We have to run our offense, execute and hammer home our shots when we have the opportunity. What we have to do is make the one more pass. Everyone cares so much they all want to make the play and shoulder the responsibility. But it's a collective responsibility.”
Following the game at Brown, Dartmouth returns home to play Holy Cross Tuesday, March 25, in a game postponed from Feb. 26, before heading to Long Island for another neutral site game against a national power, this time top-ranked Duke.
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