Loveland, Colorado- In a hard fought and well played game by both teams, the score barely exceeded a two point differential. For 56 minutes, the score was within two in the evenly matched game between 8th ranked Colorado State Rams and 7th ranked Boston College Eagles.
The Rams started off strong yet again scoring the first points of the game after a goal by freshman midfielder Matt Jui (Columbine HS; CO) three minutes into the game. The story of the day, however, was sophomore attackman Cooper Kehoe (Stevenson HS; CA) as he ended up with 4 goals and an assist on the day. Kehoe has been a large part of the Rams offense this season, accumulating many goals and assists as part of a young attack and midfield group. Feeding him the ball much of the time has been junior midfielder Kevin Wolff (Don Bosco Prep; NJ), who ended up with 4 assists against Boston College.
Defensively, junior goalie Alex Jacques (Bainbridge Island HS; WA) had another great game in goal preventing 17 Boston College shots from getting by him. He is proving to be a key asset to the Rams in their early successes. It wasn’t all him on the day. The Colorado State defense, led by junior captain Andrew Stein (Columbine HS; CO), stepped up and played a physical style of defense that helped Jacques make the easy saves. The only downside to the defensive performance was the man-down play for the Rams: they gave up 3 goals on 6 opportunities.
Colorado State held the lead much of the game, but Boston College tied the game up three times, but the Rams demonstrated why they were the better team on the day after recapturing the lead each time. With the score a one-point difference in favor of the Rams late in the fourth quarter, the Eagles gave them a run for their money as they were fighting to tie the game a fourth time before the clock ran out, but Kehoe put the game away with 21 seconds left to put the Rams up by a final score of 10-8.
After a tough upset loss last weekend to #9 Cal Poly Mustangs, Colorado State came out playing with a desire to win. It was evident they learned their lesson in the loss. They had a very good week of practices, and were back to playing intense and physical lacrosse against Boston College.
With regards to how the Rams prepared for this game after the loss, interim coach Alex Smith said, “We tried to prepare for this game just like any other. The players really worked hard this week on conditioning and competing with each other and I think that helped us out a lot – especially in the fourth quarter.”
The Rams were also playing for head coach Flip Naumburg, who decided to take a one month leave of absence for personal reasons shortly after returning from the team’s road trip to California.