The men’s lacrosse team will head down to UW-Madison to take on the Northern Illinois University (NIU) Huskies this weekend in the Great Lakes Lacrosse League (GLLL) Division 2 Championship Tournament after finishing up their season on the road against Saginaw Valley and Michigan State.

“They were both very physical teams that weekend, we played very much team lacrosse. Everybody did their part, it was a good weekend overall,” Junior Dylan Whiting said.

In the game against Saginaw Valley, where the Wildcats would see a win, the team focused on the importance of simply playing their game, putting up as many points as they could.

“We came in with the mentality, ‘they might not be quite as good as us, but we want to put up as many points as we can and we want to play our game’ … we played very good team lacrosse that day,” Whiting said.

Junior Braden Hubert reflected on game and mindset heading into the matchup against Michigan State, admitting how the Wildcats recognized the opponent’s high level of play.

“We kind of had the mentality of, not necessarily a winner’s mentality, but an ‘Oh, we’re going to do our best’ mentality. I think that wasn’t necessarily the right mentality to have going into it,” Hubert said.

Focusing on the GLLL tournament ahead, Whiting said that their group is the best they’ve had in a while and that they have to bring home a championship.

With the Wildcats just falling short as runner ups in the 2022 GLLL Finals just a couple years back, many current members of the team are fueled by the loss as they now have a shot at redemption.

“They want it really bad, obviously because they felt what it’s like to come that close and just fall short,” Hubert said. “The mentality coming into this weekend is that it’s a business trip.”

The team had a late 10 p.m. practice Wednesday night, and with no turf available to use, but still the team came out in massive numbers to prepare for the upcoming road trip.

“That just shows the commitment, we got like 20 guys out here on a Wednesday night at 10 p.m. That’s kind of the grit that we expect from our team,” Hubert said.

The Wildcats will take on the NIU Huskies on Saturday, April 20 at noon. 

“We owe it to ourselves, to give it our best this weekend,” Hubert said.