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NCAA DIVISION II MEN'S LACROSSE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPMay 26, 2013Nate FrechetteTyler PrevostDan SheehanJeff WhitePHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA Le Moyne – 11 DAN SHEEHAN: First off, thanks to everybody. Certainly everybody in our locker room is proud of the fact that we could have a game that was absolutely fantastic for everybody in attendance and everybody that had an opportunity to watch in similar fashion to the games last night. It's always special to bring a group of guys down here and have an opportunity to compete for something that you worked so hard all year long, and it's‑‑ I've got a great job. So thanks. Q. Coach, obviously you know better than anybody how every single time you win a national title it's special, but given that it's been a few years does it make it that much more sweeter that were able to win it today? NATE FRECHETTE: I mean, for us all three of us are seniors and obviously it's very special for us. We've been working really hard all year and for us to come out and win this is very special and emotional for all of us. (No idea who that was). Q. For Nate and Tyler, I'm sure you both know Jeff didn't play his best game in the postseason last year. What was it like for you to see him come up big and just be as huge as he was today for you guys? DAN SHEEHAN: First of all, Jeff‑‑ that's got nothing to do with anything. We gave up 15 shots to a team that averaged 60 last year, and the goals that went in the cage were on the doorstep, so that's got absolutely nothing to do with anything. But go ahead. NATE FRECHETTE: Yeah, I mean, we have all the confidence in the world in Jeff. He's a great goalkeeper. I've been playing with him four years, and I wouldn't rather have anybody else in the cage with us. TYLER PREVOST: Yeah, I've played with him for two years. I'm his roommate. I love him. He's a good player. Q. Obviously Mercyhurst has a powerful team. They made it this far. Talk about managing the emotion of the fourth quarter when they win a lot of face‑offs and it was all them if I'm not mistaken, they rattled off a lot of shots and seemed to have a lot of momentum. What do you say to each other and what's coming from the coaching staff to keep things cool and keep your heads about you? JEFF WHITE: Well, we obviously knew they were going to make a run coming back in the fourth quarter, so we knew they were going to score some goals, and it was just we had to keep our heads out there and, I don't know, just not let their‑‑ I don't really know what was going through my head. TYLER PREVOST: I think the coach told us we have eight possessions and really that was on the offensive end and then we were losing a couple face‑offs but I thought our defense did a really good job just holding them. Q. Jeff, you have two straight shots go off the post at the end of the game. What's going through your head when that happens? JEFF WHITE: Thank God for that post. DAN SHEEHAN: That's a save. JEFF WHITE: I don't know, obviously I was just thinking, thank God the ball didn't go in the net. That's about it. Q. Tyler and Nate, we talked a couple weeks back about how you guys have been kind of playing with a chip on your shoulder, having to go on the road in the NCAA Tournament. Every week it seemed like you guys were out with something to prove. Talk about how the chip on your shoulder and that attitude helped you make it here and ultimately cap it off with a win? NATE FRECHETTE: I mean, we've been on the road but we have all the confidence in the world, and wherever we play we know we're going to bring our best game, and whether we're in Long Island or Philly, we're going to bring our "A" game and step it up when we need to. TYLER PREVOST: Yeah, I completely agree with Nate, not only our best game but we're going to bring our best crowd, too. Our entire fans come to every single game, and our parents and everything, they're really supportive. Q. Obviously Le Moyne seems to have a Syracuse University similar type thing going on where there's high expectations for you every year and when you don't make it you put more pressure on yourselves to get back the next season. Talk about the accomplishment of getting back here and winning another championship and kind of bringing the thrown, I guess, back to Syracuse? NATE FRECHETTE: It's what you work for every day, to come out, we're running sprints, we're working really hard every single day, and for us to get here, for me personally it's very emotional. It's my senior year, and probably no other place I'd rather be. TYLER PREVOST: Yeah, in the fall we talked about not just having a good year, we talked about making it to the National Championship. That's what Le Moyne is about. So yeah. JEFF WHITE: I think I can speak for all of us. This is the reason why we came here. We don't come to Le Moyne just to get to the National Championship game, you come to win one, and if you don't, then it's like‑‑ you're not a failure, but that's why you come to Le Moyne. You come to win, and obviously we did that today. Q. Nate and Tyler, it seemed like you guys had a bunch of goals where it was a feed across the crease to another guy and a high‑percentage shot. Can you talk about how you got those on offense and maybe the philosophy of shot selection you come into a game with? NATE FRECHETTE: Yeah, every goal that we want to get we want to be, as coach says, hanging on the rim. We always look for shots that are right on the doorstep, and typically our goals are credited to great ball movement and everyone else working hard and the guy who scores it is just the fortunate one on the end of it. TYLER PREVOST: Yeah, we don't have that one player that's just going to take over the game. We have all of us, all three attacks, all separate and back‑line middies, we're going to do our job out there and try to get a good possession and hold it and score. Q. What did you tell your guys during that time out when they were making that run in the fourth quarter? DAN SHEEHAN: I think I'm on 15 years of no pregame chat, no halftime chat. A guy by the name of Mike Massara told me a long time ago that you work Monday through Friday so you can play on Saturday. You know, I thought we had‑‑ my staff did a fantastic job with the scout. Mercyhurst did nothing that we were not expecting. We knew‑‑ it's been a game of runs for us all season long, so we're two very, very similar teams. So it was just a matter of we've kind of built this program on our defense, and you've got to let your kids make plays, and I think down the stretch being able to get to Brian Scheetz' hands with Alex Cameron, Carter and Jeff staying tall in the goal, it's kind of easy because I think we've got a bunch of kids whose lacrosse IQ is pretty high and they work real hard Monday through Friday. Q. What I was asking you earlier, it's been a couple years since you were able to bring this home. Does it make it that much more sweet today? DAN SHEEHAN: Absolutely. I caught myself a couple of times this weekend trying not to be the grumpy old guy that's been here before and realizing I've got a bunch of 18, 19, 20‑year‑old kids that we had a GoPro camera on a helmet, and if you would have told me a couple years ago that I would allow something like that to happen, I would have told you you were crazy. But yeah, it's certainly special, the opportunity to get here, and then I guess how we did it. We lost two games in the regular season, and we didn't play badly. We shot the ball poorly in one. We made a first‑team All‑American in one, and we lost a fantastic overtime lacrosse game, so there was nobody in our locker room that ever questioned anything that we were ever doing or how good we could be. For us to get here, hats off to our locker room for understanding and never‑‑ the world that we live in in Division II, you lose one game and all of a sudden you start looking in the rear view mirror, you look at two, you lose two and all of a sudden you know everybody's schedule from there on out. Just a fantastic season. Q. With the tournament being three games this year, is it any other impressive that they had to win three really tough games as opposed to two? DAN SHEEHAN: Yeah. You know, I think it makes the road a little bit sweeter that you had an opportunity‑‑ I thought the kids handled the situation. We used to take a couple days off so the kids could go through final exams and this year we were practicing at 7:00 at night without lights trying to get ready for a game. So I thought our kids did a fantastic job of handling all the distractions that myself included really never had an opportunity to experience. Q. What was kind of the emotion and what do you remember from those last two minutes on your sideline as the balls were coming off the post and you're holding on to the one‑goal lead? DAN SHEEHAN: You know, we've been pretty fortunate all year long to be able to run four short stick defensive midfielders. I am not sure there's another program at any level that has the ability to do that. I'll be honest with you, I kind of get out of the way of my staff at the defensive end of the field on game days. When you've got a returning goalkeeper of the year, you've got a returning first‑team All‑American defenseman of the year, the list goes on and on and on, it really is game day‑‑ you kind of get out of the way, and we rely on our kids to make some plays. And that's exactly what happened. I told Coach Ryan right after the game, thank God the game was only 60 minutes long and not 60 and 10 seconds. Absolutely fantastic, two teams that are so, so similar in everything that we do, and it's unfortunate that one of us had to leave here the way they did, and I'm pretty fortunate that we've got an opportunity, too. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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