An early season, seven-game stretch featuring four losses served as a wakeup call for Lakeville North in the midst of what junior attacker Blake Piscitiello called a “championship slump.”

It can be difficult to maintain an edge as the defending champ. But nothing re-lights the flame like defeat.

“After a couple losses? Yeah,” Piscitiello said. “It was not fun practices, it was annoying practices. … We had to get back to, ‘We’re the hungry guys again. We’re coming for business.’ It’s gotten better.”

The Panthers won their eighth straight game Tuesday, a 17-3 state quarterfinal victory over Moorhead at Eden Prairie High School. Third-seeded Lakeville North will meet second-seeded Stillwater in the semifinals Thursday at 3 p.m. at Chaska High School.

There was never any panic within the team that Lakeville North wouldn’t be at this point. Those four losses came by a total of six goals, and all came against fellow premier programs.

“We scheduled as hard as we could,” Panthers coach Matt Stonestrom said. “We knew we had experience, so there was no benefit in playing anybody other than the best teams we could find.”

If anything, the difficult schedule did Lakeville North a favor, identifying shortcomings that needed addressing. Most of those resided on the offensive end.

“Yeah, in game, you could kind of see things, and then it becomes quite clear in film. It was one of those things. I wouldn’t necessarily call us selfish in spots, but we probably tried to own the moment too much and forced it,” Stonestrom said. “So we saw a lot of places where guys were open or available, and a lot of little things – a couple yards here or there – that could kind of help us. I think that helped big time for us.”

The Panthers’ offense has logged double-digit goals in all eight victories amid their current streak. On Tuesday – after unseeded Moorhead (13-4) struck first to go up 1-0 – Lakeville North (13-4) potted five goals in the first, two of which came from midfielder/face-off extraordinaire Quinn Power, followed by two from Piscitiello.

Blake Piscitiello led the way with six goals Tuesday, while Power and Carson Piscitiello each scored four goals and Jackson Whalen tacked on three of his own. Fifteen of the 17 goals were assisted.

The offense was humming.

“I think we’ve gotten more trust in the guys next to us, so the ball is moving more freely. You see today, we just were able to share it really well,” Stonestrom said. “Everybody is playing with a lot of confidence, so that’s huge.”

“We had some new guys come into the system. After awhile, they caught up and it was just business as usual, North-brand lacrosse,” Piscitiello said. “Now we’re rolling.”

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By JAKE OFFENHARTZ (Associated Press)

NEW YORK (AP) — American investor Martin Shkreli is facing a new lawsuit for allegedly retaining and sharing recordings from a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album that he was forced to sell following his 2017 conviction on securities fraud charges.

The lawsuit was brought Monday by a cryptocurrency collective, PleasrDAO, which purchased the only known copy of the album from Shkreli for $4.75 million. The album, “Once Upon a Time is Shaolin,” has not been released to the public, functioning as a rare contemporary art piece since it was auctioned off by the famed hip-hop group in 2015.

In the lawsuit filed in Brooklyn, New York, federal court, PleasrDAO accused Shkreli of retaining digital copies of the album in violation of their deal and disseminating them widely among his social media followers.

They point to his recent comments on social media boasting of sharing the digital recordings with “thousands of people.” Over the weekend, Shkreli played portions of the album during a livestream he hosted on X, which he called a “Wu tang official listening party,” according to the lawsuit.

Shkreli did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit marks the latest twist for an unusual album created in protest of the devaluation of music in the streaming era, but purchased at auction by Shkreli, a man known for jacking up the price of a life-saving drug and his “Pharma Bro” persona.

Shkreli was later forced to sell the album — packaged in a hand-crafted silver and nickel case and including a 174-page book wrapped in leather — following his conviction of security fraud charges.

PleasrDAO said it bought the physical copy of the album and its digital rights over two transactions, in 2021 and 2024. They said they understood that Shkreli had destroyed any trace of the album’s files.

“Any dissemination of the Album’s music to the general public greatly diminishes and/or destroys the Album’s value, and significantly damages PleasrDAO’s reputation and ability to commercially exploit the Album,” the lawsuit states.

As of last month, the album was headed to the Australia’s Museum of Old and New Art, which said it planned to host private listening sessions featuring select tracks from the album beginning this week.