Bandits notebook
Back-to-back weekend makes lone appearance
It’s the next-to-last weekend of the season, and the Buffalo Bandits finally have reached the toughest part of the indoor lacrosse schedule: games on consecutive days.
The Bandits defeated the Rochester Knighthawks on Friday night, and take on the New York Titans tonight. It’s something of a scheduling quirk that they only have one such weekend this season, but that doesn’t make it any easier for Bandits’ Phil Sanderson.
“Back-to-back games are a lot tougher on the body,” he said. “I’m not a spring chicken any more by any means. You have to be smart. You feel it on Sunday morning when you wake up. You hurt a bit more.”
The Bandits won’t try to do much different in terms of strategy this weekend, outside of perhaps alternated goaltenders.
“By now, at the end of the year we all should be in pretty good shape,” Sanderson said. “Every shift should be hard. You play for the win one night, and then you see what happens the next night.”
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Bandits coach Darris Kilgour has been in a good mood this week. One of his favorite teams is a champion.
Kilgour is a big fan of North Carolina basketball, so you can imagine how happy he was when the Tar Heels defeated Michigan State on Monday to win the NCAA championship. Kilgour points to a former coach at North Carolina as the reason for his long-time support.
“Dean Smith,” he said. “I really appreciated the way he coached. It was always team first. . . . Smith really understood that it’s team first if you really want to win. That’s something I want to carry on with the Bandits.”
“A lot of defenses we run, a lot of stuff we run on offense, we take right from basketball,” Kilgour said. “You watch professional basketball or a well-coached college game, and that’s sort of what it looks like on our floor.
“You should try to relate everything in life to what matters most, and in my life that’s lacrosse in terms of professional career.”
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The Bandits’ toughest opponent this week has been the flu bug.
Sean Greenhalgh missed Friday’s game with a temperature over 100 degrees. John Tavares missed practice on Tuesday. Mark Steenhuis was home sick on Thursday. Plus, Rich Kilgour and Clay Hill are both a little sore from nagging injuries.
“All the depth we had disappeared. We’re sort of down to who is available. But we have a deep team, and whoever comes in will be able to come in and contribute right away,“ Kilgour said.
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