Don't believe what you've heard about the Moses Brown boys lacrosse team. Friday showed why.

PROVIDENCE — The demise of the Moses Brown boys lacrosse team has been greatly exaggerated.

Replacing three first-team All-Staters wasn’t going to be easy. The Quakers knew that. It would take time to build chemistry. Understood. Teams that have been waiting for their supposed downfall would come in as hungry as ever. MB is ready for the challenge.

On Friday, the Quakers proved that, while much has changed with their lineup, the results remained the same. Barrington came in hungry, threw its best shot, and missed. Moses Brown didn’t play its best — and to be fair, neither did the shorthanded Eagles — but the 10-7 win showed it's still the favorite to be the team to win the state title this spring.

“It was a good team win,” Moses Brown junior Peter Sarnowski said. “We played well; we could have played better, but we ground it out and got the win.”

“We played a good physical team game on our end and they came in ready for us so we gave them what we had,” Moses Brown senior Chase Wightman said. “It wasn’t our best, but we’ll dial in and we’ll be ready for our next game on Tuesday.”

Nothing about this season was going to be easy for Moses Brown. The Quakers’ three graduated All-Staters — Peter Buonanno, Owen O’Farrell and Jake Murray — were foundation pieces for the roster during their time at MB.

The Quakers won’t have individual players step up into their positions and assume the role those three played. That would be unfair. Instead, Moses Brown will rely on its ability to play as a group, with contributions from everyone on the field.

“We’re working together and keeping the team bond tight,” Sarnowski said.

“We lost a lot of people last year but I’ve been super proud of our guys, especially some of our sophomores turned juniors who have been stepping up,” Wightman said. “They’ve filled a lot of the shoes of our talented class last year so I couldn’t be more proud of them.

“People say it’s a rebuild year for us, but I think we’re only reloading.”

On Friday, Sarnowski showed why.

The junior midfielder scored four times in the first half that saw MB lead, 5-3, at the break, and helped shut the door in the second with another goal.

“We were able to play as a team and we were able to work to make that happen,” Sarnowski said. “We’re a team offense and that’s our goal — we play as a team and win as a team.”

The offense wasn’t as crisp as it will be in late May and early June, but you could see the beginning stages of what Moses Brown wants to do with its ball movement. Last year’s offense was dominated by attackmen who could get through just about any defense, but Friday’s offense performance was highlighted by players who were patient to finish.

With the Barrington defense leaning in Sarnowski’s direction in the second half, it opened the door for other Quakers to step in and score. Andrew Corsi and Wightman were the benefactors, scoring two goals apiece to help maintain the lead.

“It’s certainly not one guy. It’s all six guys who are on the field and anyone else who comes off the bench,” Wightman said. “We run a team offense and it goes through all of our guys.

“Today we were slow in the beginning but Peter Sarnowski — he stepped up and really carried us in the goal column today. We couldn’t have done it without him.”

Moses Brown’s defense allowed it to remain comfortably ahead, but there was a slight pause when Barrington’s Colin Hope scored with 2:48 left to make it a three-goal game. The Quakers responded by killing some clock and putting the nail in the coffin with Corsi’s final goal with 1:11 left to play.

The Eagles didn’t get the result they wanted, but playing minus Quinn McNamara and Nick Spaight, they knew they were going to have to be on their A game to have a chance. Barrington didn’t have it on Friday, but took the loss in stride and isn’t about to let its 1-2 start to the season change expectations.

“We can be a state championship team,” Barrington’s Colin Hope said. “Learning from our mistakes on both sides of the field, growing as a team and getting better individually is what we have to do.”

The win doesn’t change a thing for Moses Brown. While the annual meetups with La Salle are the big games on the Quakers’ schedule, that’s not how the Quakers are looking at things. They can’t afford to.

Moses Brown knows its getting every opponent’s best effort, so the only game the Quakers care about now is the next one — which happens to be on the road against a Hendricken team that will be hungry following its first loss of the season on Friday to La Salle.

“We have one goal every year, but we try to live in the present and focus on each game that comes up and focus on the now,” Wightman said. “We do have that goal, but so that hasn’t changed.

“We’re thinking about Tuesday right now but we’ll get ready.”

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Moses Brown looks like a D-I boys lax power after win over Barrington