“It’s playoff lacrosse. Everybody’s good,” Georgetown Coach Kevin Warne stated. “I think you have to respect winning because winning will be taken away from you in a second if you don’t respect it and how you’re able to get there. They were the better team tonight, and they beat us.”
Graham Bundy Jr. scored three targets for the Hoyas (15-2), whose 11-game profitable streak got here to an abrupt finish. Delaware (13-5), making its first NCAA tournament look in 11 years, will meet seventh-seeded Cornell (12-4) in the quarterfinals this coming Sunday in Columbus, Ohio. The Big Red superior with a 15-8 defeat of Ohio State.
“I think we just had a history-making win,” stated Blue Hens goalie Matt Kilkeary (14 saves). “Hopefully now we’re on the map and people don’t take us lightly.”
Georgetown got here into the postseason looking for to go a step additional than final 12 months, when it was buried in a 14-3 quarterfinal loss to Virginia. But as an alternative of aiming for his or her first journey to the semifinals since 1999 and the second in program historical past, the Hoyas might be at house after one of many extra beautiful first-round upsets because the tournament expanded to 16 groups in 2003.
Only 4 earlier No. 2 seeds — 2007 Virginia, 2010 Syracuse, 2014 Syracuse and 2016 Denver — had stumbled earlier than the quarterfinals, and Delaware coincidentally pulled the primary of these upsets. Now the Blue Hens have turned in one other shock after the Hoyas by no means achieved a lot traction.
“I felt we were choppy all night,” Warne stated. “We didn’t get into a flow.”
Still, Georgetown led 9-7 after Connor Morin’s objective with 4:39 to go. For the nation’s prime protection, which had allowed eight targets per recreation getting into Sunday, that normally could be sufficient.
Goals by Lenkaitis and Tye Kurtz in a span of 76 seconds tied the rating at 9 with 2:13 remaining. Georgetown gained the following faceoff, however TJ Haley’s cross obtained away from Morin, permitting the Blue Hens to clear it and name a timeout with 1:04 left.
Lenkaitis didn’t provoke the ultimate play till 16 seconds remained, and he discovered Ward for the winner.
Sunday was an illustration of one of many steps the Hoyas haven’t taken in their surge from nationwide afterthought to championship contender. Georgetown was a shock NCAA tournament staff after profitable the Big East in 2018 and 2019; firstly of the tournament final May, it wasn’t anticipated to achieve Memorial Day weekend.
But after final 12 months’s quarterfinal breakthrough and a full season spent ranked in the highest 5, the Hoyas had been a goal. Delaware, in the meantime, was making its first NCAA tournament look since 2011, and its 20-8 play-in pummeling of Robert Morris on Wednesday was its first postseason victory since 2007.
From the opening minutes, it was clear the Blue Hens weren’t glad ending the season with solely these accomplishments.
“A big piece of our plan and what we’ve been doing over the course of the season, particularly the past couple weeks, has been belief,” Delaware Coach Ben DeLuca stated. “Belief in what we’re doing, belief in themselves, belief in our team, belief in our process — it was a major ingredient to what we needed to have coming into tonight, and our guys showed that. Without a doubt, never wavered.”
It helped that Delaware jumped to 3-0 lead, establishing it might compete with the Hoyas. And after Georgetown rattled off 4 targets in a row to go up 5-4 in the second quarter, the Blue Hens restricted the Hoyas’ penchant for scoring in bunches and prevented any deficit from rising bigger than two.
Georgetown is left to dissect how issues unraveled. Shaky capturing (9 for 46) performed a task, and the Hoyas weren’t in a position to exploit Delaware’s choice to place a brief stick defensive midfielder on main scorer Dylan Watson, who had a team-high 58 targets this season however was held scoreless on 5 pictures. Late-game defensive struggles didn’t assist, both.
“I think we had good effort,” Warne stated. “I don’t think we played very smart. That’s what it really came down to.”