This past weekend was the first round of the Premier Lacrosse League playoffs! All of the former Irish players performed very well, and many of them will be featured in the upcoming semi-finals.

Changing The Narrative

While his season came to an unfortunate end this weekend, Sergio Perkovic played lights out.

And truth be told, we owe him an apology. Throughout his career, we and the entire lacrosse community have placed him into one specific role: an outside shooter who scores a billion goals or does nothing at all. While he had shown flashes of other play styles earlier this season, this game he proved that he isn’t going to follow that same old narrative.

Sergio had 2 goals on 2 shots, going a perfect 100%. But while that in itself is impressive, that’s not what we would like to focus on. The story is rather how he scored them.

Neither were the classic Sergio stepdown. His first goal was a crazy BTB twister. It looked like something we would see from Jake Taylor. And his second was a fake step-down into a dodge to the middle, almost Bryan Costabile-like. 

It’s great to see this second prime of Sergio, and how he continues to improve his game. It wouldn’t be crazy if next season he becomes one of the most dominant threats at the midfield position.

Kav Bowl Part 3 On Deck

The Redwoods were able to pull out a great win over the Chaos with a dominant second half. With this win, they move on to play the Outlaws in the PLL semi-finals, setting in motion the third Kav vs Kav game of the season.

The most critical part of the Redwoods’ win was a 5 goal run (including a 2-pointer for 6 total) that overcame a 5 point deficit early in the game. Of this Garnsey played a critical role, dishing the rock to pick up 2 assists, his only points of the game (a later wild Ryder goal was disallowed on review with McAdorey in the crease)

This run was topped by a CKav goal giving the Redwoods their first lead of the game. Chris tallied 3 goals in the game, the aforementioned one, as well the first two scored by the ‘Woods. In a game that started slow for the Redwoods, CKav was the foundation that kept them game tied until the rest of the team got on their feet.

Defensively, Chris Fake and the crew played stellar. After a bit of a slow start trading goals with Chaos and allowing the 5 goal run, they defense flipped the switch and only allowed 4 goals in the second half (only 2 if you don’t include the 2 quick ones at the start of the half that were part of the Chaos’ 5 goal run). This performance was critical to keeping California in the game.

If this Redwoods team continues to click like they were in the second half of this game, there isn’t anything that can stop them.

Next, the league moves to Philadelphia for the semi-finals. The matchups are Waterdogs vs Atlas in the East, and Outlaws vs Redwoods in the West. It will be a great weekend of lacrosse, and we can’t wait to see what the finals matchup will be!

#GoIrish

ND-ATL 2.0