The No. 12 ranked Army West Point Men’s Lacrosse team won a thrilling 13-8 game over arch-rivals Navy in the Star Series presented by USAA in front of the largest men’s lacrosse crowd in D1 this season. 10,400 people packed Michie Stadium for the final time in the 2024 regular season.
The Black Knights got it going early and often, racing out to a 3-0 lead behind goals from CDT Bailey O’Connor ’24, CDT Evan Plunkett ’26, and CDT Jackson Eicher ’25.
Navy scored its first goal with 25 seconds left in the first quarter. Eicher scored the first goal of the second quarter and his second of the game to make it a 4-1 game. After Navy made it 4-2, the Black Knights rattled off the next three. CDT Gunnar Fellows ’26 and Plunkett got the first two and then just five seconds after the Fellows goal, CDT Will Coletti ’25 won the ensuing faceoff and sprinted downfield, and fired it home to make it 7-2 Army. Navy would score the next four goals to close out the half with Army leading 7-6.
The third quarter was one of the most entertaining quarters of lacrosse this season and there was a grand total of zero goals scored. CDT Sean Byrne ’26 played out of his mind, making nine saves in the third quarter alone. Army forced Navy’s goalie to make three of his own in the quarter.
The fourth quarter began with a Navy goal to make it a 7-7 ball game with 11:09 to play. Then enters CDT Paul Johnson ’24. The firstie who was an integral piece of last season’s magical run has missed all of this season up until today with a nagging injury. With the shot clock dwindling, CDT Ryan Sposito ’24 had a beautiful skip pass to Johnson to shoot it underhanded right under the Navy keeper to put Army up 8-7.
After that, the Mids thought they had the game-tying goal, but a Coach Alberici challenge gave Navy a crease violation leaving the Johnson goal as the game-winner.
The floodgates opened after that. A 5-0 run by the Black Knights behind the Johnson goal, two from Fellows, one from CDT Reese Burek ’24, and one from Plunkett gave Army a commanding 13-7 lead with just 4:08 seconds left. A Navy goal cut it to 12-8 but then Eicher put the exclamation point on an amazing day securing his hat trick to put Army up 13-8 with 30 seconds left.
Byrne tied his career high, which he set two weeks ago, with 19 saves to guide Army to the win. Coletti went 13-24 at the faceoff x and scooped up eight ground balls to go along with his goal.
Next up for Army is a road trip to Lewisburg, PA to play Bucknell on April 19 at 7:30 PM.
Excerpt and image taken from https://goarmywestpoint.com.
