ALBANY – “Beat Vermont” could be the rallying cry for the University at Albany lacrosse teams on Saturday. The men and women each play the Catamounts, who ended their seasons a year ago.
The UAlbany men (2-4 overall, 1-0 America East).take on Vermont (3-4, 1-0) in Burlington at noon, the same time the Great Dane women (4-5, 0-0) face the Catamounts (4-4, 1-0) at John Fallon Field.
“Oh yeah, for sure,” UAlbany women’s junior midfielder Katie Pascale said. “Really looking forward to watching (the men), too, obviously. That’s a huge opponent for them this season, too. But they’re rooting for us, too.”
On the men’s side, Vermont has beaten UAlbany seven straight times, most recently a 17-7 rout in the America East semifinals in Burlington last year. The Catamounts have knocked the Great Danes out of the last three conference tournaments.
UAlbany head coach Scott Marr said the Great Danes need to “play within ourselves” to change the outcome against Vermont.
“Sometimes when you end up losing a couple of games and the playoff games we’ve lost to them sometimes guys try to do too much to make it happen,” Marr said. “I think we just need to play within ourselves, within our own game, within our system and hopefully we do things the right way. A lot of those games have been one goal, two goals, so we’re right there with them. They’re a little different of a team this year and so are we.”
The UAlbany women defeated Vermont 16 straight times until the Catamounts edged the Great Danes 12-11 in last year’s America East championship game at John Fallon Field.
“Those feelings are still there, but we’re a new team,” Pascale said. “We have new girls on it. We’re ready to attack them with this new group and we’re really looking forward to it.”
Vermont and UAlbany were picked to finish 1-2 in the America East women’s preseason…
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