Millburn Boys Lacrosse Keeps Rolling

The Millburn boys lacrosse team picked up its fourth consecutive win on Thursday afternoon, defeating the Columbia Cougars on the road, at Lynn V. Profeta Field in Maplewood, 12-10. It was a hard fought game which saw seven ties and three lead changes, but in the end it came down to execution, and the Millers finished stronger.

“I knew that today was going to be a slugfest right from the very beginning,” said Millburn head coach Bill McCutcheon. “This is a huge rivalry for us.”

With 4:32 left to play in the contest and the score knotted at 10, Ricky Simon picked a great time to score his first goal of the game, crossing from left to right just outside of the circle and then bouncing it in from about 10 yards out, putting Millburn up for good.

“We made some mistakes, we kind of shot ourselves in the foot, and we‘ve had a tendency to do that this season,” said CHS head coach Dean Witty. “They’re a well coached group, I know both coaches and they’ve done a great job with this group.”

Simon assisted on Millburn’s final score, the knockout punch delivered by Mark Funk, where Simon found Funk on the right side of the net, just outside of the crease for the easy put away. The goal, Funk’s sixth of the game, put Millburn up 12-10 with 1:55 to play. After a won draw by Millburn, the Millers were able to hold on and run out the clock for their fifth win of the season.

“Compared to last year, this is obviously a huge change,” Funk said of the early season success. “It feels good. We’re beating a lot of teams, I’ve never beaten Columbia before, so it’s a good change of pace. I attribute a lot of it to the new coaching staff.”

Millburn was ahead 10-8 with 4:47 left in the third quarter, following Funk’s fifth goal of the game. But on the ensuing draw, Columbia came up with the ball and Ralph Ibezim found the back of the net off of an assist by Austin Little, 38 seconds later. Midway through the fourth quarter, Alec Ramos snuck one high past Millburn’s keeper to tie up the game, with 7:10 left to play.

After the first half of the game seemed to be a goal scoring fest, with 15 total scores, the second half was more of a defensive battle, and Millburn was just slightly better, holding Columbia to three scores, while adding four goals on offense.

“In the early get go we had a tough time seeing the ball with our goal keeper and with our defense,” McCutcheon said. “Once we got around that and settled in and played defense the way we play defense, it started going our way a little bit.”

Despite losing the possession battle against Millburn (Millers up 15-11 in draws, 23-14 in groundballs and 35-21 in shots attempted) the Cougars were in the game the entire time and never trailed by more than two goals at any point.

“We need to control the ball,” Witty said. “We need to control it on draws on groundballs. I think we created some turnovers today, but we didn’t finish the play.”

Columbia actually took a brief first half lead in the second half, when both Brett Mangan and Devon Good turned won draws into goals, giving Columbia a 5-4 advantage with 11:16 left in the first half. Millburn scored the next three goals of the game to take a two point lead. Columbia responded with back-to-back goals, to tie the game again with 3:05 to go in the opening half at 7-7.

With 2:13 left in the first half, Tyler Alexander stole a pass from Columbia’s keeper and fired in Columbia’s eighth goal of the game on an empty net. Millburn was up 8-7 at the break. Both teams added two scores in the third quarter.

“We’re kind of creating our own problems here. We’re not executing when we need to,” Witty said. “We don’t possess the ball with any urgency or intensity.”

Millburn, which improved to 5-1, was led by Funk’s six goal two assist performance. Both Alexander and Brian Baker each had two scores each. Little led Columbia, which dropped to 2-5, with three goals and an assist. Both Mangan and Good registered two scores and an assist.

“The county should definitely be on notice,” Funk said. “We’re a very good up-and-coming team, and we feel very good about the county tournament. We can’t wait.”

The two teams meet again on Saturday morning in the opening round of the Essex County Tournament, at Millburn High School.

“We have got a lot of work to do, it was a sloppy game, we haven’t had a game since last Thursday,” McCutcheon said. “I’m proud of the guys, I think we lifted at the right time. I’m not happy about 10 goals being scored on us, but I am very happy about 12 goals being scored for us.”

“The kids have kind of hung in there and said that things are going to get better. We’ve lost some games that we shouldn’t have lost,” Witty said.