OSWEGO, N.Y. — The Oswego Men’s Lacrosse team is set to play their final game of the 2021 season as they take on the Cortland Red Dragons on Friday, April 30th. This is the second matchup between the two teams this year, with the previous game ending in a 16-7 Cortland victory on April 9th. The 4 p.m. match up will take place in Cortland as the Red Dragons look to take the number one seed in the SUNYAC West.
Oswego is going into Friday’s contest on a 6-game losing streak including a 20-6 loss to the Geneseo Knights last week. In fact, the Lakers haven’t won a game since March 7th of 2020, their second-to-last game before the season was cancelled. The Red Dragons, however, have been dominant all season and are currently on a 5-game win streak. The Lakers need to generate enough offense to keep pace with Cortland’s explosive duo of Dante Yacavone and Zak Jones, who have 67 combined points this season. Oswego will be lead by junior attackman, Weston Gray, who leads the team in goals. The Lakers have also gotten solid production out of freshman midfielder, Lucas Cioch, who leads the team in assists and total points.
Unfortunately, history isn’t on the Lakers’ side in this matchup. The Oswego Men’s Lacrosse team is 0-37 versus Cortland all-time and will have to get their first ever win against the Red Dragons in order to avoid a winless season. Faceoff is set for 4:00 p.m. at Cortland.
-
Oswego women’s hockey loses first two games of the season
OSWEGO, N.Y. – It was a tough weekend for the Lakers as they finish start their season with a 0-2 record with two bad loses to Adrian College. Their home opener was a one sided affair where the Lakers never really got their footing in the contest. The Bulldogs were able to score two goals in the first period and gain the momentum early. Down by two in the second period the Lakers showed some fight when Kaylen Taddia was able to capitalize on a penalty shot resulting in their only goal of the game. Despite the final score of 4-1. Debuting transfer goalie Lexi Levy played a great game for the Lakers tallying thirty three goals ending the contest with a .892 save percentage. Levy is coming off of an injury and proved her importance to this Lakers team in her debut. The Lakers had a chance to get some revenge when they had a rematch against Adrian College the next day.
The Lakers had revenge on their mind in their rematch, but ended up suffering an even worse loss to Adrian College in their second affair. The Lakers just couldn’t get anything going offensively and had some trouble preventing the Bulldogs from pouring it on. Less then three minuted into the game the Bulldogs capitalized off the power play to go up 1-0 very early. From there it was all downhill for the Lakers as they would finish the game scoreless. The story of the game was the Lakers had many opportunities to capitalize on the power play but just couldn’t get anything cooking. The Final score was a 5-0 shutout by the Bulldogs. The Lakers look to regroup as they travel to Potsdam on Friday, November 4th for a conference game against the Potsdam Bears.
IMAGE PROVIDED BY OSWEGO ATHLETICS
-
Men’s Hockey Season Recap after SUNYAC run
GENESEO, NY — The Men’s Hockey team will head to Geneseo this weekend to battle for the SUNYAC Championship. The 16-9-1 Lakers have had an up and down season up to this point, as the group now is on a five-game winning streak fresh of a victory over rivals Plattsburgh. Oswego’s season started back on October 19th with an exhibition game against Carleton Place, then against Nazareth, both wins for the Lakers. The group would head into the regular season and secure four conference wins in a homestand at the Marano Campus Center that would give them first place in the SUNYAC standings.
One turning point in the season came from a road trip to Geneseo, to face a nationally ranked team in the same barn that Oswego lost the SUNYAC Championship in last season. The Lakers would fall apart and lose 9-1 as multiple Lakers would be tossed from the game and miss their next matchup against Hobart. This game would be the start of a three-game losing streak against nationally ranked teams, Hobart and Salve Regina in the Utica Thanksgiving Tournament. Oswego would turn it around on that Saturday in Utica against Plymouth State to give the Lakers hope as the team continued into the last week of the first half of the season. The Lakers would head on the road and swept the Buffalo teams in the conference to finish 7-3 in the first semester.
Oswego would come back from Christmas Break to play in the annual Pathfinder Bank/Oswego State Classic in which the team would first face off against Saint Mary’s. The defending champs would fall to the mid-west team 1-0 and face UNE the following day and also lose 4-3 to start the new year off on the wrong foot. This losing streak would continue against two more nationally ranked teams in the month of January as Utica and Elmira defeated the Lakers in the Marano Campus Center. The Lakers would not defeat any nationally ranked team this season as the group would go 0-6 against those teams, one of the biggest eyesores of the 2019-2020 season.
After losing to Cortland in overtime, Steven Kozikoski, the sophomore netminder that has not played in a regular season game for the Lakers, got his shot in between the pipes as both senior goalies David Richer and Cedric Hansen were not playing their best games. Kozikoski’s first start was against Canton, a team Oswego has figured out the past few seasons. The Lakers took a commanding win in the Marano Campus Center as the group defeated Canton 8-2 and was one of the turning points that occurred in the second half of the season. The new netminder would go 5-1-1 in net and win his first playoff game for the Lakers this past Tuesday.
The group secured the second seed in the standings with their success in the second semester and faced Plattsburgh on home ice. The team would defeat their rivals 4-1 and move on to Geneseo. The Lakers season once again would end in Geneseo as the Ice Knights defeated Oswego 4-1 in the SUNYAC finals. This would be the second time Oswego would not be able to get it done in the finals while being held at Geneseo. The Lakers would finish 16-10-1 to end the season as the group looks to rebuild as 13 seniors will move on from the program. Moving forward, Oswego looks to rebuild around players like Alex DiCarlo, Travis Broughman, and Steven Kozikoski heading into these next few years as these three players are all underclassmen.
-
Oswego High School Hockey Season Recap and Sectionals Preview
CORTLAND, NY — Oswego Buccaneers Hockey has been preparing this past week as the team gets set to head on the road to Cortland-Homer for the first round of Sectionals. The Division II Section III 2020 Sectional Tournament begins this Thursday as the Oswego Cortland-Homer match up is the first of two quarterfinal games being played. New Hartford is set to travel to Clinton Arena to face Clinton Friday evening for the second game. All four of these teams have a tough road ahead however, as the lowest remaining seed will go on to face Skaneateles, the current number one team in the entire state. The highest remaining seed will head to play the 15-3-1 Whitesboro Warriors who finished the season with a 9-1-1 division record.
The Buccaneers season has been up and down as the group finished only 4-8 in division but had an overall record of 11-9. The team began back in November with two games against Section V opponents that ended with two wins over Notre Dame and Churchville-Chili. The Bucs would head into division play in December as the team would drop two games to New Hartford and Clinton before heading to Albany in which the group won two games against Section II opponents. The rest of December would be back and forth before the team went on a five game win streak to start the new calendar year. This streak began against Spencerport who is based out of Section V. At the time, the Rangers were ranked 13th in the state in which the team has now moved up to 8th. With this win streak, Oswego would end up being ranked as high as 13th statewide over the course of the season. This streak however would end quickly after losing 6-0 to Skaneateles and would continue into a three game losing streak that occurred against divisional opponents. The Buccaneers would get one win going into February against Auburn but would drop their final two regular season games, one being against their upcoming opponent Cortland-Homer.
Cortland-Homer finished 5-7 in division this season as the Golden Eagles scored a total of 42 goals against division opponents, second just behind Skaneateles who finished with 58. In comparison to Oswego, the Bucs only scored 26 points in their division games which is the second lowest out of the seven teams. In their two games against each other, each team got a win as Oswego defeated the Golden Eagles 4-3 during their 5 game win streak. However, on February 4th, the Bucs would fall to Cortland-Homer 6-1 at home.
Most of this season’s success have come from new upper class who have stepped up and taken larger roles on the team. Junior Ryan Bartlett has recorded 24 points (8 goals and 16 assists) in only his 12 games played. Bartlett has not played since Oswego’s game against New Hartford on January 13th. The junior has doubled his points totals compared to last season even though he has missed a good amount of the season. If the Buccaneers could add him back into the line up for Thursday nights game, Oswego’s chances of moving on in sectionals will definitely increase. Oswego also leans on their junior goaltender Brandon Demling who last year only got a total of 39 minutes in between the pipes. With a total of 359 saves and a goals against average of a 3.07, the junior has stepped into the starting position and has allowed the Bucs to win some close games. Demling has played both games against Cortland-Homer this season and you can expect him in net tomorrow evening in Cortland. Puck drop is set for 7 p.m. from the J.M. McDonald Sports Complex in Cortland.
