NLL Insider

With a home game on the way, his Wings pulling themselves out of a slump, and a little thing called the single-season scoring record, Philadelphia forward Athan Iannucci has plenty to celebrate tonight in addition to his birthday. (26 today!) The second-year standout talks record breaking, what went wrong with the Wings, and the corny rhyme that can take a little credit for his big success.

At what point this season did you start to seriously think you could break Gary Gait’s record?
It didn’t really cross my mind until after about the third game somebody said to me ‘oh man, if you stay on this pace you’ll break the record.’ Once someone told me that if I stayed on pace I could do it, it made me think it might be possible. I knew I’d already had my production at that level so if I could keep it there then why not? I just had to work to keep it there.

So goals 61 and 62, are those the kind of goals you remember forever?
Yeah, I mean I guess. Let me see, how many of my goals can I actually remember? I remember a lot of goals I guess. They weren’t really special goals, they weren’t anything fancy. The first one, 61, it didn’t even go where I was aiming and it just kind of trickled its way through his [Nick Patterson’s] leg pads. The 62nd was pretty much the same thing.

Have you spoken to Gary Gait at all about it?
No I haven’t! I’d like to though. I was hoping he might call me.

To what do you attribute your ability to break the record? What made it possible for you do it?
I think really it’s the team I play on. I try my best and I think I get better each year but for me to play at the level I’m playing at, I didn’t get there on my own. If you look at my goals a lot of them come from our defense transitioning off. When we change possession they get to the bench so I can be the first one out that door. A lot of times I get a breakaway, and if it’s not a breakaway it’s a 2 on 1, or at worst like a 3 on 3. In a situation like that there’s a lot of confusion, there’s less players on the floor, a lot more things can happen. I get put in really good positions. When we play if we see an opportunity we’re allowed to just go for it, we don’t have to worry about using the whole shot clock like a lot of teams try to do, like work around and get the best shot possible, that’s not really our philosophy. If you think you’ve got it, go for it.

How do you feel like your game has improved from last year?
For me it’s just been my confidence level. If you can believe it you can achieve it, as corny as that sounds! At that point when you release the ball if you have good thoughts and good intentions and have confidence in what you do then that ball is going to go somewhere and do what you want it to. If you have reservations or you’re not sure of yourself then it’s not going to happen.

Even though you lost this past weekend in Minnesota do you feel like you guys are back on track?
Yeah, I mean we had a terrible weekend for travel. Our goalie Blazer came in the day of the game, flights the night before got all messed up, people were having heart attacks on planes, they were having emergency landings in other cities and then still having to make their way to Portland. It was crazy. The weekend of travel we went through was pretty bad. Myself and Rob [Van Beek] fortunately were in Vancouver so we just drove down. For the team to play as well as we did this weekend through all of that I thought we did pretty well. We came back against Portland and figured out a way to win, and we came back against Minnesota and we were one second away from a win. We’re still a pretty young team in terms of our experience together, we’ve got a lot of new faces and we’re still trying to figure each other out.

When you guys did hit that slump a little while ago, was there anything in particular the team was looking at and kind of going ‘okay, this isn’t working’?
I think it was probably something for every person. There was probably one thing that every person was doing. There wasn’t really one consistent thing but for some of our O guys maybe they weren’t getting off the floor fast enough. Maybe our D guys weren’t getting spread out or whatever, but I think every player pretty much had one thing they needed to get better at. Anytime you play a game everyone makes mistakes, you know? But there are some mistakes you make that are a big deal and some that aren’t. If we can eliminate our most harmful mistakes then that just makes us that much better, that’s what happens when we play good and conversely when we play bad we make a lot of silly mistakes.

You guys are 7-0 at home and all of your losses have come on the road. Do you think there’s anything to that, that you guys play better at home or is that just how it’s shaken out?
We definitely play better at home. We have crazy supportive fans and I think also when we play at home even though some of our guys are travelling everything’s on time, we’ve done it a bunch of times before and we’re used to it. When you’re on the road you have different hotels and different connecting flights and this and that but when we play at home we have a routine and everyone’s comfortable and prepared. When we’re on the road we don’t get a chance to get together before we play. The first time everyone’s together is in the locker room an hour before the game. Sometimes it’s hard to get everyone on the same page in those situations.

What’s the team’s confidence level like heading into this weekend vs. New York?
I’d say pretty good. I think they’re a good team and I think we let ourselves get surprised by them when we played them last time, and kudos to them for capitalizing but we definitely didn’t play our best game. I think if we do that we’re the better team so we’ll see what happens. I think everyone’s feeling pretty good though.

I know you probably don’t want to look too far ahead, but what is it about this Philadelphia team that you believe could get you guys to the finals?
If anything gets us to the finals it will be everyone playing their role without making those little mistakes. Lacrosse is weird, especially with the way our finals work–it’s one game. Either you win and move on or you lose and you’re done, it’s not like you have a series of games to try and get a handle on the other team and figure them out. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the team. I guess for us it’s really our work ethic. When we work hard and really play hard, even when we’re down we play with a purpose and a sense of urgency and if we can bring that style of play to every game all game that’s definitely our biggest weapon.

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