Despite numerous penalties in the final quarter, the St. Thomas men’s lacrosse team held off St. John’s to win 16-11 in the Upper Midwest Lacrosse Conference Division II championship.

Both teams got off to quick starts, tied 4-4 by the end of the first quarter. The offense and defense for the Tommies came alive in the second quarter, and by halftime they held a 12-7 lead.

“We tried to make a couple of adjustments on our man-down defense, which ended up working pretty well,” head coach Brian Gross said. “Anytime we had them in a six-on-six situation, we had the advantage on defense.”

The defense stayed tough throughout the start of the second half, not allowing any scoring through the the majority of the third quarter while the offense added two points to stretch the lead to 14-7.

Then penalties started to hit.

“We’ve been struggling this season to have four-quarter games where we really show up every quarter,” sophomore long-stick midfielder Peter Liffrig said. “Towards the end, the penalties were killing us.”

The Johnnies were able to cut the lead to three by the five-minute mark in the fourth quarter, trailing 14-11, thanks to several six-on-five and six-on-four situations by Tommies fouling out.

“Obviously we’ve got to cut down on the number of penalties that we have,” Gross said. “We didn’t do a great job, but we did well enough to hold them off.”

The Tommies were able to fend off the late surge, adding a couple of goals to extend the lead to five, where it stayed for the remainder of the game.

The win caps off a 10-2 regular season. The team will travel to California next week to participate in the national championship tournament.

“We’re at the point in the season where we’re kinda nitpicking right now,” Gross said, “so we’re gonna keep working on some of the little things. We’re happy with where we are in the big picture.”

Noah Brown can be reached at brow7736@stthomas.edu