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WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. – The story seems to repeat itself every year around this time. A supremely ready Lycoming College men’s lacrosse team, with wins piling up on its back, heads into the Middle Atlantic Conference playoffs as one of the hottest teams in the field. This year is no exception, as the Warriors enter the Commonwealth Conference Tournament with the No. 3 seed, having piled up three straight wins. The opponent is no exception either, as the team will meet No. 2 Widener for the seventh time, this time for the first time in Chester, Pa., since 2005, for a 7 p.m. showdown on Tuesday, May 1, at Leslie C. Quick Jr. Stadium.
 
Tickets for the game at Quick Stadium are $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, $2 for students and free for children under age six. 
 
The Warriors (7-7 overall, 4-2 Commonwealth) enter the tournament looking to once again keep its recent success rolling, which included an 11-7 win over the tournament’s top seed, Albright, on April 21. The Lions, who will face Lebanon Valley in the other Commonwealth semifinal on Tuesday, dealt the Pride (7-7 overall, 5-1 Commonwealth) an 11-10 double overtime loss on April 7.
 
The winners of the two semifinal games will face off in the Commonwealth Conference Championship game on Thursday, May 3. The winner of that game will face the winner of the Freedom Conference Championship, which features No. 1 Eastern, No. 2 King’s (Pa.) and No. 3 FDU-Florham, in the MAC Championship on Saturday, May 5, to earn the MAC’s automatic berth into the NCAA Division III Tournament.
 
The Warriors have relied on taking advantage of opponent miscues all season long, as their man-up offense has produced a league-best 1.64 goals per game, as sophomore Matt McCaffer (Marcellus, N.Y./Marcellus), 0.64 per game, and junior Stephen Romano (Sewell, N.J./Washington Township), 0.57 per game, are the top two man-up scorers in the league.
 
In conference games, the Warriors got used to playing tight games, winning against Elizabethtown (8-7) and Messiah (13-12) in overtime, while all but two of their games were decided by four goals or less.
 
All of that adds up to an interesting matchup with the two-time defending MAC champion Pride, who are stingy with the ball (league-leading 15.00 turnovers per game).
 
The game will also feature a matchup of dynamic playmakers in Romano and Widener’s Josh Fox. Romano, the 2011 MAC Player of the Year, once again leads the Warriors offensively, despite being consistently double-teamed and constantly marked on the field, as he sits second in the league with 2.57 goals per game. He has heated up in the last week, helping him earn his third Commonwealth Conference Player of the Week award of the season, as he notched seven goals in the overtime win against Messiah.
 
Fox has been just as good for the Pride, scoring 2.36 goals per game and 2.83 in league play. He won the conference’s player of the week award after posting a five-goal game against Lebanon Valley and added three goals against Messiah.
 
Defensively, the Warriors feature a young corps, but one that has developed throughout the season and held conference opponents to single-digit totals in four of six games. Senior Victor Marchetti (Cortland, N.Y./Homer) leads the corps, as the MAC Scholar-Athlete and 2011 Second Team All-MAC selection has posted 31 groundballs and caused nine turnovers this year. In net, sophomore Andrew Hauk (Sackets Harbor, N.Y./Immaculate Heart) wrapped up his first conference regular season as a starter with a .538 save percentage, second best in the league, and an 8.27 goals against average.
 
The Pride have one of the best defenses in the league, as goalkeeper Mac Nesler led the league with a .600 save percentage in league play and the team allowed a league-low 6.72 goals per game in conference games.
 
Widener has won all six meetings between the two teams’ in the conference tournament, wrecking a five-game Lycoming winning streak in 2010, a school-record 10-game stretch in 2009, and seven-game streaks in 1999 and 2002. The games have varied in form, from large margins but mostly nailbiters like the 9-8 MAC title game in 2002 and the 19-17 shootout in the MAC semifinals in 2008.