When going through the Canisius interview process, Mark Miyashita was happy to hear players say they were hoping for a bit more structure out of a new coach. That fit the former Sacred Heart assistant perfectly, and the players probably didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.

“Day one, first team meeting, I sent out the Google calendar and I’m pretty sure it had the first 90 days of the school year roughly planned out with times of what we were doing and when,” Miyashita said. “It was probably a shock to the system.”

It’s one of the changes the self-described planner has orchestrated in his first year as head coach of his alma mater, which will play Detroit Mercy at 10 a.m. on Saturday in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference title game. He’s adjusting a culture that has been constant for as long as some of his players have been alive.

Miyashita replaced Randy Mearns, who spent 19 years as the head coach of Canisius before taking a start-up job at nearby St. Bonaventure. Canisius won two MAAC titles under Mearns' watch and had 41 players earn all-conference honors. Miyashita, one of the top point producers in school history, saw firsthand what Mearns meant to the school when he played for him from 2000 to 2003.

“I never thought that he would leave,” said Miyashita, who was inducted into the Canisius Hall of Fame in 2013. “I thought he would be here until the stick and whistle had to be pried out of his [hands and] mouth. … He looms large as a personality and a figure. He’s done a lot of great things for the area. Hopefully myself and my staff can pick up that mantle.”

Miyashita got in contact with Canisius the day he learned the job was open, but he still was on a shorter track when it came to setting up a program. He wasn’t hired until August, so he had no time to dilly-dally. He called everyone on the team and as many recruits as he could when he made the drive down from Connecticut to Buffalo.

“There really wasn’t a lot of time to establish anything over the course of the summer, expectations we wanted to set or anything like that,” Miyashita said. “It was kind of a hit the ground running kind of mentality and kind of learning on the fly.”

PHOTO BY TOM WOLF

The start of the season was about getting to know his roster. Miyashita watched Canisius games online before returning to the school, but that meant he only knew the players who got run on the field. In time, he began to establish the norms and standards while keeping the same up-tempo style Mearns had in place.

“It was a little bit later of a start than I’d like to have had,” Miyashita said. “At the end of the day, there was enough time to at least get a few things sort of established and set up so that the guys got here there was going to be some changes and doing some stuff differently than we had before.”

That, of course, included the added structure. Senior midfielder Steven Coss said the team is on a strict schedule.

“Everything that we do is on a timer, which has been good for us,” Coss said. “It keeps everybody in line and allows us to know exactly what we are getting into without the monotonous running a drill for a very long time.”

“He’s a lot more to the point,” said attackman Connor Kearnan, the 2018 MAAC Offensive Player of the Year. “He doesn’t take any BS, by any means.”

So far, the results on the field are showing promise, especially considering the modest expectations Canisius was met with entering the 2018 campaign. The Golden Griffins were picked to finish sixth in the seven-team MAAC in the preseason coaches’ poll.

The Griffs opened the season with the disappointing loss to Dartmouth, but then rattled off three straight wins against Binghamton, Furman and Cleveland State. They hung with Albany for a quarter and only lost to Robert Morris by two in their premiere non-conference matchups.

“We may go down, but we’re never out of it,” Kearnan said. “People never get down on each other. There’s positivity everywhere.”

The Griffs split conference play, defeating two teams picked ahead of them in the preseason poll, to set themselves up for a season-defining win in the MAAC tournament on Thursday.

Coss notched two goals and four assists, while Kearnan added two goals and three assists in fourth-seeded Canisius' 11-10 overtime victory against top-seeded Quinnipiac. Ryan McKee scored the game winner, capitalizing on open space 10 yards from the cage.

For the 12 seniors, this stretch run is a final chance at a winning season and an opportunity to leave a legacy at the start of a new era in Canisius lacrosse. The Golden Griffins, who enter the tournament final at 7-8, haven't won the MAAC tournament and its NCAA tournament automatic qualifier since 2012.

“It’s teaching the younger kids basically how they should play and how they should finish out their careers,” Kearnan said. “You come in freshman year and the seniors tell you, ‘Enjoy it, it goes by quick.’ You can say, ‘Ah, whatever,’ but it’s true, it flies by.”