Millburn Boys Bounced From Counties

Sometimes a team just runs into another squad that is simply better than they are, and there’s not much that can be done about it. That’s what happened on Saturday afternoon at West Essex Regional High School, as the Miller boys lacrosse team saw its county tournament run ended in the quarterfinals against the Knights, 16-4.

After taking a brief 1-0 lead behind a nice looking score by Max Nemenow with 6:12 left in the first quarter, the Knights asserted their will, and there wasn’t too much Millburn could do about it. Not even 30 seconds after Nemenow put Millburn up 1-0, Joe Fusco tied the game off of a won draw. By the time Millburn scored again, with 6:36 left to play in the opening half, West Essex had six goals, and they were off to the races.

“West Essex has got a very good team,” said Miller head coach Bill McCutcheon. “They’ve played quality opponents, they’re an A division team. They’ve seen teams week in and week out in every game, that we don’t necessarily get to see as far as our competition is concerned.”

Gabe Greenberg brought Millburn within four, bouncing in a score from 12 yards out. But West Essex finished the half on a scoring barrage, adding five more scores before halftime, making the score 11-2, and at that point, the Millers were essentially out of it.

“We weren’t afraid. We came into it knowing what we had to do,” McCutcheon said. “We’ve played seven games in 11 days -- we’re beat.”

Millburn lost the possession battle with groundballs and draws won, but also did not play its best game, making some uncharacteristic mistakes throughout. There were many dropped passes and other unforced turnovers that didn’t make life any easier for the Millers going for the upset. Though West Essex clearly applied a ton of defensive pressure that forced a lot of mistakes as well.

“We made a lot of mistakes,” McCutcheon said. “It’s a combination of both. When you play against competition that is just that good, at the end of the day, a better team is sometimes just a better team. They’re very well coached, they’ve got a ton of offensive threats.”

Millburn scored its third goal of the game with 27 seconds left in the third, making the score 15-3 and then Ryan Bednarski added their final score midway through the fourth quarter.

“I’m proud of our effort, our guys don’t give up,” McCutcheon said. “No one is happy with the outcome of the game, but if we can learn from it a little bit, and use that going into the rest of our season, and the rest of our conference play and into the state tournament, we can be a better team.”

The Millers normally take a bunch of shots on net, but because of a lack of possession were held to 16 in this one, while the Knights racked up 33, converting 16 into scores. They were led by Phil Lapone’s four goals and one assist and Pat Farrell’s three goals and five assists. Overall, five different Knights scored multiple goals. West Essex improved to 7-3.

Millburn got one goal each from Bednarski, Nemenow, Greenberg and Ricky Simon. Mark Funk added two assists.

It was the second loss this week for a Millburn team which raced out to a 7-1 start this season, before dropping two of their last three. The last two losses were against teams who play against better competition and there was a clear difference in the level of play. In any case, however, Millburn is still 7-3 and in second place in the Waterman Division behind Montclair Kimberley Academy. Millburn is in action again in Verona on Monday.

“Fundamentally speaking, we’ve got to change a lot of things,” McCutcheon said. “The way that we address the ball on defense; the thing is that we haven’t seen a team that cuts and moves the ball this well all year long. …I think that what we need to do is get back to our basics.”