Manhattan Men’s Lacrosse final score against Wagner.
@MANHATTANLAX / INSTAGRAM
Isaiah Rosario, Senior Writer
The Manhattan University men’s lacrosse team opened up their 2025 season in amazing fashion as they beat Wagner College by a score of 14-3. The Jaspers had a total of nine goalscorers in their season opener and five of those nine scorers had two goals.
Head coach of men’s lacrosse Doug Sage mentioned a goal for him and his team this season, which is to be 1-0 at the end of every gameday. With the win to open the season, he’s so far achieved his goal. Sage brought up the rough start to the season his team had last year, as the men were 0-5 in February of 2024.
“Now we are 1-0, in the month of February,” Sage said. “We’re hopefully going to build some momentum off the first win. Always happy with wins. Team came out strong and built some momentum early on … We watched the second half, and it was a lot of things that we got away from fundamentally … we didn’t finish as strong as we started. Our goal [was to] play four great quarters, and I think we played two and a half, pretty solid quarters. We’ll take the win and move on and get ready for Monmouth.”
During the 2024 season, the Jaspers were fourth to last in the MAAC in goals per game. Those numbers certainly change as this game could be a potential showing on how dangerous this Jasper offense could really be. Midfielder Kelly DuPree spoke to The Quadrangle about what went so well for the offense against Wagner.
“Everybody just did a good job of just playing within our offense,” DuPree said. “No one was trying to do too much. As a group we play really well together. We played well around each other, kept it simple, and we were able to get some easy goals.”
A saying around any sport is that defense is the best offense. When a team’s defense is playing well, it makes it a lot easier for the offense to come through in games such as this one.
One of the standout players for the game defensively was Manhattan goalkeeper Connor Hapward who allowed only three goals on 15 shots on goal. Those statistics led Hapward to receiving the honor of MAAC men’s lacrosse Defensive Player of the Week.
“It’s a great honor, but I think it’s a testament to our team, and, more specifically, our defense,” Hapward said. “They gave me a lot of shots that I liked seeing from outside and [Robert Pousak], Damien [Blando] and Matt Pantorno, [when] downlow they all won their matchups on their guys, and they were frustrating their attacks … they had guys in their hands and whatnot. Just credit to our defense for giving me the shots that I want to see, and to our team. It’s a lot easier to play defense when your offense builds you that cushion early on. It’s a great honor for me, and I’m happy to be named Player of the Week, but it’s more of a team award than anything.”
The team was bottom four in the MAAC in goals allowed last season and Hapward mentioned that with the plethora of returning players they created a goal for themselves, that the defense will look to hold opponents to single digits goals.
Manhattan’s second game this season is against Monmouth University. Sage spoke about some of his goals leading into his second contest.
“Our goal is always prepare ourselves as best we can, so that when we are facing off tomorrow at 11:30 A.M. we’re ready to compete at all levels of the field, knowing that we’re not going to be perfect, and that if one area is struggling, hopefully another area can pick up some slack,” Sage said. “Our goal will be to play four quarters of great lacrosse tomorrow. Hopefully we come out clicking offensively early on and defensively lock it down like we did last week, because it allowed us to build some momentum for the game.”
Defense for this team will be key in order to make a successful run during the MAAC Championships. The team believes that they have the players and the pieces around them to hold up the trophy again and push MAAC lacrosse to make the Jaspers proud once again.