Charlotte Hounds (0-1) at Florida Launch (0-1)
7 pm Saturday, May 3
FAU Stadium, Boca Raton, Fla.
TV: YouTube
The Game: After opening the 2014 Major League Lacrosse season with tough losses, both the Hounds and the Launch are gunning for their first wins of the season.
Charlotte, last year’s MLL championship game finalist, got off to a rough start last week, falling behind early against the vastly-improved Ohio Machine—which had lost all four of its previous games against the Hounds, and was 4-24 overall the past two seasons—in a 15-8 loss.
The Launch—formerly the Hamilton (Canada) Nationals franchise—had a similarly-rocky start to their inaugural season. They trailed the Denver Outlaws 11-1 at the half, but rallied over the final two quarters before losing 14-10.
What the Hounds are saying: “No excuses, but we got out-hustled, we got out-coached, we got out-ground balled, we got outplayed in pretty much every facet of the game… I think we’ll see a much better performance out of the Hounds this week. We’ve moved from being the hunter to being the hunted. (Last year), we weren’t on anybody’s radar as someone you needed to take down to get a playoff spot. We’re circled on everybody’s schedules now. We’ve got to go back to being the hunters again. It’s not going to come easy, but we’ve got a great group of leaders, a lot of guys taking responsibility for what’s happening, and we’ll do nothing but get better.”—Charlotte head coach Mike Cerino.
What the Launch are saying: “I think you’re going to see some better ball movement on the offensive end. We’re going to continue to push it as a team, play team offense. But the thing we need to address is defense. Our defense didn’t play as a unit–we got beat on our short sticks a little too easy, we weren’t physical on the ball, and we were late on our slides. When we did slide, we weren’t filling in on the back side. Defensively, we’re going to tighten it up a little bit. We’re really going to play tougher on-ball defense, communicate better on our slide packages, and not give the opposing team easy goals.”—Florida head coach Stan Ross.
Prediction: Could be a close one, considering the past record between the Hounds and former Nationals (2-2 all-time). While Charlotte will once again not have Adam Ghitelman in goal, Florida will be without Stephen Keogh and last year’s MLL most valuable player Kevin Crowley because of NLL commitments, and possibly without starting goalkeeper Brett Queener because of an injured arm. Hounds 15, Launch 13
