No. 20 Georgetown scores convincing win over Hofstra 

The Georgetown men’s lacrosse team was supposed to play Hofstra on the first Saturday of March last year. Didn’t happen. The Hoyas never made it to Shuart Stadium.

On this first Saturday of March, the No. 20 Hoyas made it, and they made a statement by beating Hofstra 14-6 behind four goals from Robert Clark and three goals and three assists from Ward Melville alum Daniel Bucaro.

Last season the Hoyas were headed the long way from Washington to Long Island for a game at Hofstra the next day because bad weather took out I-95 as an option. But now the Hoyas were in their bus on I-80 in Pennsylvania, near the Poconos, unable to go forward or back.

An 18-wheeler had jackknifed and the highway was shut down. The team was stuck in place for nearly a full day.

“It was snowing,” said Kevin Warne, the Georgetown coach who was an All-America on defense for Hofstra before graduating in 2000. “It was really bad out. We couldn’t even get off that road. Not a lot of food. Not a lot of water. But the guys handled it pretty well. It actually helped us later on in the season because we were around each other so much.

“We were excited to get out of the bus when we finally got going the next morning. We went to a Wawa and Arby’s. We gave them good business because we were quite hungry.”

But the game was canceled and the bus was headed home.

On Saturday the Hoyas showed up, and convincingly. And their presence was more than just winning the game.

“Obviously, you come up here for recruiting purposes,” Warne said. “We’ll always have that infamous day sitting in Route 80 in the Poconos, but it was good to get up here and expose our guys to some Long Island food.”

Hofstra is getting hungry for a win. This was its third straight loss, the first two by one goal. The 2-3 Pride looked like a team with many young guys learning on the job after losing 20 players from last year’s 6-8 team.

“We’ve got a lot of young guys out there, but so do a lot of people,” coach Seth Tierney said. “You’ve got to do your job. Things haven’t broken our way, but you make things break your way. We haven’t made it break our way yet. So we’re going to be a work in progress.”

Clark beat goalie Bobby Casey to make it 1-0 52 seconds in. By the 4:10 mark of the second quarter, it was 6-1.

Ryan Tierney then scored two of his three goals for Hofstra, but the All-CAA junior said the offense “had no flow, no spacing. We’re very young on the offense.”

Bucaro found the net with 1.8 on the clock, so it was 8-4 at halftime. Two goals by the Hoyas (4-1) in the first 3:11 of the third extinguished any thoughts of a Hofstra comeback.

Next up for the Pride is a current top 10 team. Ohio State comes to Shuart next Saturday.

“The schedule doesn’t get any easier,” Seth Tierney said. “We’ll get a good week of practice in and go from there.”