Game Information
Opponent	Rutgers Scarlet Knights
Date	Saturday, February 26, 2022
Time	12:00 p.m.
Location	Baltimore, Md. | Ridley Athletic Complex Field
Watch	N/A
Online Media	Live Stats
Follow Us	Instagram | Twitter
Game Notes	Loyola

Quick Hits About The 'Hounds

• Loyola University Maryland opens its 12th season at Ridley Athletic Complex on Saturday, February 26, when it hosts Rutgers University.
• Faceoff is set for 12 p.m.
• Saturday's game will steam live on ESPN+ .
• Dating back to March 23, 2016, Loyola is averaging 12.55 goals over its last 94 games. It has scored less than 10 only 16 times in that span (17.2 percent).
• Kevin Lindley now has three of the top-25 season goal totals in school history: 37 in 2018, 60 in 2019, 42 in 2021. He enters his fourth full season, fifth overall, at Loyola as the school's career leader in goals with 161.
• Loyola's defensive midfield combined for a goal and three assists last week as Payton Rezanka scored, and Mustang Sally had one assist, while Max McGillicuddy added two.
• The Greyhounds have averaged 12.2 wins per season over the last nine full seasons (excluding the shortened 2020 campaign). That stretch includes the 2012 NCAA Championship, NCAA Semifinal appearances in 2012 and 2016 and NCAA Quarterfinal appearances in 2012, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2021.

Last Time Out

• Seth Higgins' goal less than five minutes into the fourth quarter gave a 10-8 lead, but Johns Hopkins scored the game's final three goals to edge the Greyhounds, 11-10, last Saturday at Homewood Field.
• Joey Kamish scored with no time left on the clock in the third quarter, his fourth goal of the game, to put Loyola back in front by a goal, and Higgins caught a Kevin Lindley feed and scored on the crease. That goal provided a two-goal lead for the second time in the game and the first since the middle of the second quarter.
• The Blue Jays, however, got back within one when Ryan Evans scored unassisted at 9:15, and Joey Epstein caught a Jack Keogh pass to score on extra-man at 6:47, knotting the game at 10-10.
• Loyola won the next faceoff, but the Greyhounds turned the ball over, and Johns Hopkins long-stick midfielder Scott Smith went the distance to score on a low shot at 5:22, putting the Blue Jays back in front.
• Kamish scored a game-high four goals, and Aidan Olmstead had four assists for the Greyhounds. Kevin Lindley and Evan James each had two goals, and Higgins and Payton Rezanka scored once each.

In The Polls    

• Loyola is ranked 20th in the USILA coaches poll and 19th in the Inside Lacrosse rankings entering Saturday's game.
• Rutgers is sixth in the coaches poll, fifth in the media.

Series History    

• Loyola and Rutgers will play for the 13th time in series history when the teams take the field on Saturday and the third time in four years.
• The Greyhounds hold an 11-1 advantage in the all-time series and have won the last four meetings.
• The most-recent series started in 2019 when Rutgers hosted the Greyhounds in New Jersey. Loyola picked up a 13-7 victory in that game.
• Loyola then hosted the Scarlet Knights on February 22, 2020, and the Greyhounds came away with an 11-10 victory. Joey Kamish scored with 1:53 left in regulation to provide the game-winner in that game. Bailey Savio set a Patriot League and Loyola record in the game with 18 ground balls as he went 23 of 24 on faceoffs against the Scarlet Knights.
• The series dates back to 1990 when the teams first met, and Loyola won the first seven games before Rutgers scored a 17-7 victory on April 7, 2007.

Making Of A Roster    

• Loyola's roster of 51 players – the largest in program history – is replete with 41 of 49 players from last year's squad.
• The Greyhounds locker room boasts so many players this year thanks in part to the additional year of eligibility players received due to the 2020 season being shortened due to COVID-19.
• Nine players returned to Loyola this year to compete as graduate students with a tenth coming back as a sixth-year player. Ryan McNulty will spend his sixth year with the team after compiling a medical hardship waiver for a fifth year (due to injury in 2017 as a freshman) and the his 2020 waiver.
• This year's team consists of nine freshmen, 12 sophomores, 11 juniors, nine seniors and 10 graduate students.
• A total of 17 states or provinces are represented on the Greyhounds' 2022 roster with Maryland, New York and Connecticut leading the way with nine, eight and seven, respectively. Four states – New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia – and one Canadian province – Ontario – have three players each on the roster, while California, Colorado and Ohio all have two. Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Oregon, South Carolina and Texas are all represented once.

Sideline Longevity    

• Loyola also has one of the longest tenured coaching staffs in NCAA lacrosse with the group of Charley Toomey, Matt Dwan and Marc Van Arsdale having been together since 2017. Of the teams ranked in the top-20 of the USILA Preseason Poll, only the staff at Duke has been together longer; the group at Virginia has been together for six years, as well.
• Add Volunteer Assistant Coach Steve Vaikness and Director of Operations Chris Myers, and the staff has spent 72 years coaching at Loyola (including Toomey's nine seasons as an assistant coach). Toomey, Dwan, Myers and Vaikness are all Loyola graduates, giving the crew 17 more years of time on the Evergreen campus.

Higher Learning    

• As mentioned before, 10 members of the Greyhounds' roster are enrolled at Loyola as graduate students after earning their bachelor's degrees at the school: Matthew Benus (Bachelor of Business Administration in Economics; ,M.B.A. in finance), Matt Hughes (B.B.A., management; M.B.A., management), Kyle LeBlanc (B.S., applied mathematics; M.S., data science), Kevin Lindley (B.A., political science; M.B.A.), Ryan McNulty (B.A., communications; M.A., emerging media), Aidan Olmstead (B.B.A., international business & global studies; M.B.A.), Bailey Savio (B.B.A., management; M.B.A., finance), Sam Shafer (B.A., communications; M.B.A., finance), Adam Wagner (B.B.A., marketing; M.B.A., finance) and Dan Wigley (B.B.A, finance; M.B.A.)

Preseason Honors    

• Six Loyola players earned a variety of preseason recognition this year, and the Greyhounds were picked as the preseason favorite in the Patriot League for the ninth-straight season (every year since joining the conference).
• Ryan McNulty was a unanimous preseason first-team All-American, earning the recognition from the USILA (coaches), Inside Lacrosse and USA Lacrosse Magazine, while Cam Wyers was a unanimous third-team choice from those groups.
• Three Greyhounds – Kevin Lindley, Payton Rezanka and Bailey Savio – were named All-America honorable mention by Inside Lacrosse.
• A conference-high six Greyhounds were named to the Preseason All-Patriot League team: Lindley, McNulty, Rezanka, Savio, Wyers, Evan James and Aidan Olmstead.

Standing On Top    

• Kevin Lindley dodged from the top of the box, split a double and scored with 3:31 left in the first half of the 2021 Patriot League Quarterfinal against Navy, setting a school record in the process. His goal pushed him past the career total of Gary Hanley who scored 151 goals for 1978-81 and held the career goals scored record for 40 years.
• Lindley enters Saturday's game with 161 goals, ranking third in Patriot League history behind Colgate's Peter Baum (164, 2010-13) and Army West Point's Garrett Thul (163, 2010-13).
• Lindley became the 11th player in program history to reach 100 goals in a career when he scored his first goal on February 15, 2020 against Johns Hopkins, reaching the 100-goal plateau in just his 36th career game, the fastest in Loyola history after Gary Hanley reached the plateau in his 39th career game (1980). Hanley got to his total of 151 goals in 57 career games, while Lindley took 52 to hit that mark.
• Lindley finished his freshman season in 2018 with 37 goals, had a school-record 60 as a sophomore in 2019, 19 in the truncated 2020 campaign and 42 in 16 games last season.
• Lindley has scored three or more goals in 28 of his 57 career games.

Another Ascending The Leaderboard    

• Bailey Savio set the Loyola career record for ground balls in the 2021 Patriot League Semifinal win as he picked up six to boost his career total to 341, one more than his older brother Graham had from 2014-17.
• Now with 360 entering the Saturday's game season, the younger Savio is third all-time in the Patriot League in the category behind Lehigh's Conor Gaffney (391, 2017-2021) and Colgate's Peter Strid (384, 1993-96).
• Savio, with 631, is also second all-time at Loyola in faceoffs won behind his brother's 709. He is fifth in Patriot League history behind Graham, Gaffney (669), Colgate's Chris Eck's 664 and Navy's Brady Dove (637).

Aidan Is All Around    

• Aidan Olmstead posted two 40-plus point seasons in 2018 and 2019, and he then led the Greyhounds in points with 22 during the shortened 2020 season. Last season, he hit the 60-point mark for the first time with 31 goals and 29 assists for 60 points. In 56 career games, Olmstead has scored 175 points with 87 goals and 88 assists, ranking fourth all-time at the school in assists and 10th in points.
• After being hampered by an injury early in 2019, Olmstead posted 18 goals and 13 assists in the Greyhounds' last nine games, bringing his season totals to 23 and 21.
• In 2018, Olmstead finished his freshman season with 19 goals and 21 assists in 17 games.
• The native of Painted Post, New York, now has 22 games with two or more assists, 24 with multiple goals and 10 career hat tricks. Among those games, he has 38 outings with three or more points, 13 of those coming against Patriot League opponents.
• Olmstead was named the Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year in 2021, and he is not the only member of his family within the Loyola athletic department. His twin sisters, Riley and Logan are juniors on the Loyola women's lacrosse team.

Between The Lines    

• Ryan McNulty has been key to the Greyhounds' defense and transition game since joining the program in 2017, earning his All-America honors (USILA honorable mention) in 2020, 2021 (Inside Lacrosse Second Team) and 2022 (USILA, Inside Lacrosse and USA Lacrosse Magazine Second Team) as a long-stick midfielder. Since the start of 2019, he has been the team's leader (among non-faceoff players) with 138 ground balls while leading Loyola with 56 caused turnovers.
• Over his career, he has amassed 71 caused turnovers and 193 ground balls while scoring 12 goals to go with 12 assists. He's tied for sixth all-time at Loyola in caused turnovers, and is 13th in ground balls.

New Position, No Problem    

• Evan James shifted to attack to make the first start there of his collegiate career on February 20, 2021, against Virginia, and the sophomore finished with three goals and an assist. The Ohio native needed just six shots for his first collegiate hat trick.
• He followed that performance with a five-goal, six-point game against Utah, a contest in which he scored on all but one of his shots. He matched the six points with four goals and two assists versus Lafayette.
• In last year's season-opener at Richmond, James made his first career start, this coming in the midfield where he played in all six games during 2020, posting three goals and five ground balls.
• He earned All-Patriot League Second Team recognition after finishing second on the team with 32 goals and third with 44 points, and he was a Preseason All-Patriot League player this spring.

Takeaways    

• Loyola was the only team in NCAA Division I  last year with five players who totaled 15 or more caused turnovers this season. Matt Hughes led with 22, Cam Wyers and Ryan McNulty both had 19, Matt Higgins had 16, and Payton Rezanka tallied  15.

Toomey's Team    

• Charley Toomey is in his 17th year as the head coach at Loyola and his 26th as a member of the Greyhounds' coaching staff. Overall, he is in his 30th year on the Evergreen campus, including his four seasons as a student-athlete from 1986-90.
• Toomey has directed the Greyhounds to 160 wins, an average of 12.3 per season (not including the shortened 2020 season) since 2012, and has a 160-79 career record. Early in the 2016 season, Toomey became the second coach in program history to reach and cross the 100-win plateau; he stands second on the program's all-time wins chart behind his college coach, Dave Cottle (181-70, 1983-2001).
• As a head coach, Toomey has coached 48 USILA All-Americans, 85 all-conference selections, 21 conference positional or players or rookies of the year, a Tewaaraton Award winner and five finalists and 22 USILA Scholar All-Americans.
• In January 2019, Toomey was named to the coaching staff of the U.S. Men's National Team as an assistant coach. He will serve with Team USA in preparation for, and competition in, the 2022 World Championships in British Columbia. He was also enshrined in the USLacrosse Chesapeake Chapter Hall of Fame in January 2019 for his accomplishments as a player and a coach.

Get To Ten    

• Since Charley Toomey became head coach at Loyola in 2006, the Greyhounds have scored 10 or more goals on 150 occasions; Loyola has won 80.6 percent of those games (121-29).

Up Next    

• Loyola plays its second-straight home game on Wednesday, March 2, when it hosts Towson University at 5 p.m. at Ridley Athletic Complex. The Greyhounds then open their Patriot League schedule with a Saturday, March 5, game at Lafayette College.