College lacrosse is back. As perhaps the most anticipated season in NCAA history approaches, we’re featuring every team ranked in the Nike/US Lacrosse Preseason Top 20.
Check back to USLaxMagazine.com each weekday for new previews, scouting reports and rival analysis.
No. 15 Army
2020 Record: 6-2
Pre-COVID Ranking: 14th
Unlike most of the top teams in Division I, Army didn’t have the luxury of stashing a bunch of fifth-year seniors away for another season.
Miles Silva and Sean O’Brien won’t be piling up goals on attack. Mainstays Connor DeWitt and Matt Manown are gone from the midfield. Tom Rigney and Bennett Taylor, cornerstones of the defense, have also graduated — and at Army, there are no graduate school options to choose from.
But the Black Knights still have Brendan Nichtern around to orchestrate their offense, and that makes them plenty intriguing as a Patriot League contender with the potential to make noise in the postseason.
“When you’re talking about Brendan, I think there’s only a handful of attackmen that are similar in ability and impact that he has,” coach Joe Alberici said. “He had a tremendous freshman year and was off to a great sophomore year.”
Nike/USL Preseason Top 20
Team Previews
| 1. Duke | 2. Syracuse | 3. Maryland | 4. Penn State |
| 5. Virginia | 6. North Carolina | 7. Denver | 8. Yale |
| 9. Cornell | 10. Notre Dame | 11. Georgetown | 12. Ohio State |
| 13. Loyola | 14. UMass | 15. Army | 16. Lehigh |
| 17. Richmond | 18. Penn | 19. Rutgers | 20. Johns Hopkins |
Somehow, those plaudits might not fully cover what Nichtern’s managed in the first half of his career in West Point. He led Army in goals (30) and assists (50, a school record) as a freshman to help the Black Knights reach the NCAA tournament.
In eight games a season ago, he’d piled up 19 goals and 27 assists. The youngest player in Army history to reach the 100-point plateau, the junior will be a captain this fall.
And now the scary part for whoever crosses paths with the Black Knights the next couple years: Alberici sees Nichtern adding little pieces to his game, tweaking and fine-tuning what’s already an impressive skillset.
“We do see ourselves as a developmental program,” Alberici said. “Like everyone else, we’re looking for the best talent, but the right fit here. It is really put on you to improve your game while you’re here. For Brendan to do that is expected. But when your best player is getting better, that’s a great and terrific message for everybody else.”
Nichtern, to be sure, is the Black Knights’ biggest known at that end of the field. Without Silva and O’Brien, opportunities should develop for attackmen like Nickolas Edinger, Aidan Byrnes and Paul Johnson (whose brother Cole was a first team all-Patriot League attackman for the Black Knights in 2016 and 2017).
Among the more prominent names in the midfield are Bobby Abshire (seven goals, seven assists in 2020), returning starter Gunner Philipp (eight goals) and senior captain Nicholas Garofano (three assists).
But Nichtern will draw the most attention in 2021, especially as the top holdover on the rare team that will play without the benefit of fifth-year seniors this spring.
“A rallying call in the fall would be a little strong, but we clearly put in the back of our minds, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of work we have to do because most of the teams we’re scheduled to play against only had additions. They didn’t have subtractions,’” Alberici said. “We’ll certainly have our work cut out for us that way.”