Quick Hits About The 'Hounds

• Loyola University Maryland men's lacrosse closes out a two-game homestand on Saturday, April 6, when it hosts Bucknell University in a 1 o'clock game at Ridley Athletic Complex.
• The Greyhounds have the eighth-toughest schedule in NCAA Division I according to the NCAA's latest release of RPI.
• Loyola's win over Lehigh on March 29 was the 181st of Charley Toomey's career as a head coach, tying him with Dave Cottle (1983-2001) for most in program history.
• Adam Poitras has six-straight games with three or more points and a total of eight in that regard this season. He has scored at least one goal in nine of 10 games and has seven multi-goal games and five hat tricks or better. 
• After starting the year 3 of 21 (.142) on extra-man, the Greyhounds have scored on their last five man-up chances.
• Luke Staudt has averaged 13.0 saves per game with a .524 saves percentage through the season's first 10 games.
• The Greyhounds are in their 15th season of competition at Ridley Athletic Complex, which opened in 2010. The Greyhounds are 74-31 (.705) all-time at the stadium.

Looking Back

• Adam Poitras scored a career-high five goals, and Evan James added four, on Friday night as Loyola lacrosse defeated visiting Lehigh University, 12-10, at Ridley Athletic Complex.
• Poitras had a natural hat trick, scoring three goals in a row over a stretch of six minutes, 23 seconds in the first and second quarters, and James got his hat trick with two goals in the first quarter and one in the second.
• Loyola's defense forced 24 Lehigh turnovers, the most by a Greyhounds opponent this season. The Greyhounds matched their season-high with 11 caused turnovers in the game with Alex Bean and Max McGillicuddy each recording two.
• Remi Reynolds led the defense with a career-high six ground balls, while Bean and Chase Gregory each had four. 
• The Mountain Hawks took a 4-2 lead with goals by Andrew Kelly and Quinn Armstrong 41 seconds apart, but James drew a short stick at goal-line extended and dodged past him to score his second of the night at 5:58.
• That sparked a 4-0 Loyola run that would see the Greyhounds take the lead for good.

Watch The Game

• Saturday's game will stream live on ESPN+. 

Series History

• Loyola and Bucknell will play for the 15th time in series history when the teams take the field on Saturday afternoon. 
• The Greyhounds have won 11 of the 14 previous games in the series, including a 14-13 decision last year in which Matthew MInicus scored seven goals and had an assist for the Greyhounds on March 18, 2023, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
• The series first started in 1981 when the teams played three years in a row with Loyola winning all three. Following a 15-8 Greyhounds victory on April 2, 1983, the teams did not meet again until Loyola's first year in the Patriot League (2014).

Toomey To The Top

• With last Friday's win over Lehigh, Charley Toomey tied the program record for victories, matching the 181 won by his collegiate coach, Dave Cottle, from 1983-2001.
• A four-year letterwinner and three-year starter in goal for Loyola, Toomey has coached 280 games since taking over the reins of the program in 2006. He has a 181-99 overall record, and his .646 winning percentage ranks seventh among active coaches with 10 or more years as a NCAA Division I head coach.
• Assistant coaches Matt Dwan and Steve Vaikness have been on the staff for all 181 of the wins with Toomey.

Can't Say It's Not Balanced

• Loyola's top two scorers – Evan James and Adam Poitras – are tied atop the team's statistics with 32 points each, and Matthew Minicus is close behind with 32.
• Poitras has one more goal – 24 to James' 23 – while James has nine assists and Poitras eight. Minicus has matched James' nine assists to go with 18 goals.
• The trio has combined for 13 hat tricks (James and Poitras, 5 each; Minicus, 3) and 19 multi-goal games (James and Poitras, 7 each; Minicus, 5).

Moving Up The Charts

• Evan James and Adam Poitras are climbing the Greyhounds' all-time charts in goals and points in their fourth full season at Loyola. 
• Entering the April 6 game against Bucknell, James is seventh in career goals with 119, one behind Gewas Schindler (1996-99). He is 11th in career points with 162.
• Poitras is tied for 12th in points, matching John Carroll's 158 points from 1984-87. He has scored 108 goals, good enough to tie Chris Colbeck (1988-91) for 11th. Poitras will move past former teammate Aidan Olmstead (2018-22) and into the top 10 with four more goals.

Not Playing Like A Minnow 

• Matthew Minicus' nickname may be 'Minnow,' but he has played big for the Greyhounds of late. The sophomore from Darien, Connecticut, had 14 points combined in games against Boston University and at Lafayette, buoyed by a career-high nine on March 23 at Lafayette when he scored four goals and assisted on five. He had three goals and two assists a week earlier against Boston University. Minicus earned Patriot League Offensive Player of the Week and USILA Team of the Week honors following the game against the Leopards.
• Minicus has played in 25 games for the Greyhounds over the last year-plus and already has 76 points with 51 goals and 25 assists. This season, he has 18 goals and nine assists for 27 points after posting 33 goals, 16 assists and 49 points as a freshman in 2023 when he tied for the team-lead in points and topped all Patriot League freshmen in both categories.
• He comes from a strong line of Loyola attackers out of Darien High School where the Blue Wave have been one of the nation's historically best programs.
• Cooper MacDonnell scored 22 or more goals his last three years at Loyola and finished his 2007-10 with 77 goals and 96 points. He led the team in goals scored in 2008 and 2009 with 22 and 30, respectively.
• Kevin Lindley set the Loyola and Patriot League all-time goal scored records between 2018 and 2002 as a starting attacker for the Greyhounds. Lindley scored 196 goals, a total that entered the 2024 season ranked 10th in NCAA Division I history.

Sparking The Offense

• Evan James and Adam Poitras made the shift to starting on attack for the Greyhounds after the regular-season game at Boston University on April 15, 2023, with James moving to one spot down low for the April 18 game against Georgetown with Poitras making the move April 22 versus Colgate.
• James started the trend with two goals against the Hoyas. Poitras and he both put up four-goal games four days later against the Raiders with Poitras' quartet coming with three assists. Poitras had another four-goal game to close the regular-season at Lehigh. James then set a Patriot League Championships single-game record with six goals in the quarterfinal at Navy. Both had four-goal outings at Boston University in the Patriot League Semifinals; James posted three assists in that game, and Poitras had one.
• This year, both have started primarily on attack, and  since April 22 of last year, they have scored 77 goals.

Back As The Backstop

• Luke Staudt started the 2023 season as hot as a goalkeeper could be, posting double-digit save performances, including one with 19 stops in the season-opening win against then-No. 1 Maryland. 
• After five games (Maryland-Lafayette), he had 70 saves against 44 goals allowed for a .614 save percentage. Over the next seven games he played (Duke-Colgate), his save percentage dipped to .417.
• Staudt did not play in the regular-season finale at Lehigh, but he came back in stellar form in the Patriot League Quarterfinals at Navy, making 18 saves on 25 shots on goal (.720) to finish one off his then-career-high. He came back in the semifinal with 20 saves on 31 shots on goal (.645) against Army West Point. 
• Overall last year, he led the Patriot League and was No. 6 in the nation in saves percentage (.554).
• This year, he opened with 11 saves in a win over Georgetown and was named Patriot League Goalkeeper of the Week, and he followed that performance with a 16-save outing at Maryland, a 17-save game at Johns Hopkins and 18 versus Towson. He set a new season-high on March 16 against Boston University, stopping 19 shots. He is 10th in NCAA Division I in saves per game heading into the Bucknell game.

Scoring Where He's Needed

• Adam Poitras had his freshman season, during which he was a starter on the Greyhounds' first midfield, cut short by the COVID pandemic after he'd scored five goals and dished out seven assists through six games.
• He played in all 16 games as a sophomore in 2021, but his production was hampered as he came back from offseason surgery. As he became healthier throughout the year, his point production increased and he had eight goals and eight assists in the last seven games of the season. Poitras finished second on the team in 2022 with 29 goals, and he was third with 38 points.
• After that junior season of 2022, Poitras played for the Whitby Warriors of the Ontario Junior Lacrosse League and led the Warriors to both the Mann (OJLL 'A') and Minto Cup (National) titles. He was named Most Valuable Player of both tournaments, and in the Minto Cup, he tied for tournament-high honors with 14 goals and added 15 assists. Poitras also earned a silver medal while playing for the Canadian team at the 2022 U-21 Men's World Championships, along with Loyola teammate Josh Fairey.
• Poitras moved to start on attack late in the 2023 season, and he finished the year leading the team in points (49) and goals (34); he has played 66 games during his career and has 108 goals and 50 assists for 158 points.
• He put up a career-high seven points against Colgate last season, tying his career-high marks in goals (4) and assists (3), and he matched the four-goal mark less than a week later at Lehigh and did so again at Boston University in the semifinals.
• In the 2024 opener against Georgetown, he was again an attack starter, scoring four goals and assisting on one. Poitras set a career-high with five goals on March 29 versus Lehigh. He has seven multi-goal games this year and five hat tricks.
• The athletic gene pool runs strong in his family. His younger brother, Matthew, was a second-round draft pick of the Boston Bruins in 2022 and had five goals and 10 assists this year for the NHL team through 33 appearances before a shoulder injury ended his season.

Steady Production

• Evan James has been one of the Greyhounds' best point producers since the start of the 2021 season, scoring at least once in 54 of the 63 games he's played. In 2022, he earned All-Patriot League Second Team honors for the second season in a row, scoring 26 goals and assisting on 11 while starting on the Greyhounds' first midfield. In 2021, he played primarily on attack and had 32 goals and 12 assists.
• James had three four-goal games in 2022 – at Navy and at Colgate. He scored two or more goals in eight of Loyola's 16 games last year.
• Last year, he had five hat tricks and seven games with two or more goals; he now has 18 career hat tricks and 34 games with two or more goals. 
• He started the last six games on attack in 2023 and had 18 goals, including four on five shots against Colgate and a Patriot League Championships record six at Navy. He then had a four-goal, three-assist game at Boston University in the semifinal.
• Over 65 career games played, James is the Greyhounds' active leader in goals (119) and points scored (162). On February 24 against Rutgers, he became the 13th player in school history to score 100 goals in a career.

Don't Slow Your Mustang Down

• Mustang Sally enters the 2024 season as a Preseason All-Patriot League player at short-stick defensive midfield after posting excellent numbers both on the defensive and offensive sides of the ball.
• He caused 20 turnovers, leading all short sticks in NCAA Division I, and had six goals and four assists for 10 points.
• In two-plus seasons as a short-stick for the Greyhounds, Sally has posted 42 caused turnovers and 60 ground balls to go with seven goals and eight assists. His 10 caused turnovers this season are second nationally amongst short-stick defensive midfielders, trailing only Syracuse's Carter Rice's 11.

Toomey's Team

• Charley Toomey is in his 19th year as the head coach at Loyola and his 27th as a member of the Greyhounds' coaching staff. Overall, he is in his 31st year on the Evergreen campus, including his four seasons as a student-athlete from 1986-90.
• Toomey has a 181-99 career record. Early in the 2016 season, Toomey became the second coach in program history to reach and cross the 100-win plateau; he is tied for first 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 52 USILA All-Americans, 104 all-conference selections, 21 conference positional or players or rookies of the year, a Tewaaraton Award winner and five finalists and 28 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 was an assistant for the gold-medal winning team at the 2023 World Championships in San Diego.

Get To Ten

• Since Charley Toomey became head coach at Loyola in 2006, the Greyhounds have scored 10 or more goals on 177 occasions; Loyola has won 79.7 percent of those games (141-36).

Up Next

• The Greyhounds head on the road for their next two games, starting with a Saturday, April 13, game at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.