It might have not been pretty, but the Ohio State men’s lacrosse team defeated Detroit, 11-6, in their season opener Thursday night at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.

“We got the win, that’s what you want to start the season,” said coach Nick Myers.

But he said Thursday’s performance isn’t the brand of lacrosse he wants to showcase throughout the season.

“Win or lose, we talk about playing Buckeye lacrosse and we were slacking — 23 turnovers is way too many,” Myers said.

Senior captain defenseman Joe Bonanni said it comes to making sure the team understands that it needs to play hard the entire game.

“We’re going to give a 60-minute effort. That’s the way we were taught to play, that’s the way we’re going to play and that’s what we instill in all of our players,” Bonanni said.

Offensively, a trio of Canadians carried the Buckeyes as junior attackman Logan Schuss, senior defenseman Brock Sorensen and freshman midfielder Jesse King combined to score all but one of OSU’s eleven goals.

Schuss, who was All-Eastern College Athletic Conference first team in 2011, tallied four goals for OSU while Sorensen and King had three apiece.

Despite his performance and the team’s win, Schuss said there was room for improvement.

“We got the win, that’s what counts, but it was definitely a sloppy showing and Detroit played their butts off —hats off to them,” he said.

From the start, the Buckeyes took the lead and never looked back.

OSU took an early 3-1 lead in the first quarter behind a pair of goals from King and another from sophomore midfielder Nick Diegel.

The Buckeyes would roar to an 8-3 advantage in the second quarter behind Schuss and Sorensen, who scored three and two goals, respectively.

Detroit would make a third-quarter run to cut the OSU lead to 8-6.

All three goals were scored within the first six minutes of the quarter, which left some wondering if the Buckeyes had fallen asleep at the wheel.

Schuss said the run was predicated by OSU’s sloppy play but also credited Detroit stepping up their defense.

“I think we thought we had it in the bag and just got a little slow down there, so we just got to learn to play a full 60 minutes,” he said.

Myers reflected similar sentiments.

“We came out and we didn’t execute. They won a couple face offs, they strung up together a couple goals,” he said. “We had some breakdowns in our communication defensively, made a couple of poor decisions offensively that fed to some transition for them. And before you know it they were on a little bit of a roll.”

The Buckeyes would respond, though, with the last three goals of the game for either team behind Schuss, Sorensen and King.

OSU is 1-0 and will play Mercer in Macon, Ga., at 1 p.m. Saturday in their first road test of the year.