Guilderland discovered what other Suburban Council boys lacrosse teams knew about Shaker: the Blue Bison may be down, but they are not out.
Shaker played Guilderland tight in three of the four quarters of Friday’s Blue Division game in Latham, but a 3-0 third quarter helped the Dutchmen pull out a 7-4 victory.
The’ve got 16 kids who work hard and are pretty good ball players, said Guilderland coach Sean McConaghy. `They knew what they wanted to do, and they did it well.`
What Shaker (1-6) wanted to do was slow down Guilderland’s offense, and the Blue Bison ac-complished that with solid de-fense and good goaltending from sophomore Ken O’Connor, who finished with 11 saves.
`The thing we pride ourselves in is … we don’t give up fast breaks,` said Shaker coach Shawn Hennessey. `We try to slow the game down because of our numbers, and we prevent fast breaks with our defense.`
To its credit, Guilderland (6-0) didn’t get frustrated with Shaker’s defensive tactics through the first half. The Dutchmen kept passing the ball around and waited for an opening to take a shot.
`I felt we played well,` said McConaghy. `We worked hard on ground balls, and our defense only gave up four goals. Our offense didn’t get a lot of shots off, but their defense made certain we didn’t get a lot of shots off.`
It looked like Guilderland had found a way to beat Shaker’s defense in the third quarter when it scored three times to take a 5-2 lead, but the Blue Bison were able to slow the pace down again in the fourth quarter.
`They had the ball pretty much for the first eight minutes of the fourth quarter,` said McConaghy. `That was pretty frustrating.`
Travis Moore scored two goals, and Quinn Connell contributed a goal and two assists for Guilderland. Mike Gifford tallied twice for Shaker.
Guilderland and Shaker returned to action Tuesday. Guil-derland traveled to three-time defending Section II champion Niskayuna, while Shaker hosted Shenendehowa.“