Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 3/30/13
From Press Release
The #18 Lehigh men’s lacrosse team jumped out to a 6-1 lead and wouldn’t look back as the Mountain Hawks downed Navy, 12-7 on Saturday to improve to 3-0 in Patriot League play. Twelve different Mountain Hawks recorded a point, led by sophomore Dan Taylor who recorded his third-career hat trick and classmate Patrick Corbett who added two goals.
This marks the second straight season Lehigh has begun 3-0 in league play.
“A major point of emphasis this week was to try and get off to a fast start,” said Lehigh head coach Kevin Cassese. “Navy’s first quarters have been tremendous all year. We stressed that all week, found different ways to rep it in practice. We were able to come forward and put together a great first quarter today.
“I told the guys I wanted it to be 3-0 or 4-1, but it was 5-1 instead after the first. I didn’t think we played great down the stretch, but I thought that was enough to carry us today and give us an upper hand.”
Senior Dante Fantoni dished two assists while adding three groundballs and three caused turnovers. Senior Alex Drake tied a career high with two assists while adding a goal. Senior Ryan Snyder won 11-of-19 faceoffs with seven groundballs and a goal. Sophomore Alan Henderson dished an assist and had a career-high five groundballs.
Reigning Patriot League Rookie of the Week Tripp Telesco had five groundballs and three caused turnovers to help pace the defense while senior Mike Noone (La Salle) added a trio of groundballs.
“Navy always comes out with energy,” said Cassese. “For our guys, we needed a fast start today. We had to get that fast start. We changed it up a little bit with some of our looks against their defense. I thought we did a really nice job of finding the inside. That’s something we’ve been struggling with; we’ve been a little one dimensional on offense. We added a couple dimensions in this game. We’re going to need that moving forward.”
Drake got the scoring started just over a minute in as Fantoni intercepted a pass and set up the goal to make it 1-0 with 13:43 on the clock. Sam Jones tied it with the first of his four goals on the afternoon, but the Mountain Hawks answered with a 5-0 run. Senior Noah Molnar scored his first of the season at 8:27 followed by Snyder off the faceoff just eight seconds later. Two goals from Taylor, with a rocket from senior Brian Hess in between, rounded out the run.
Jones made it 6-2 at 10:46 of the second quarter, but neither team scored for the remainder of the half.
A DiMaria goal, Corbett man-up tally and Taylor goal from Fantoni made it 9-2 at 8:55 of the third quarter. The Midshipmen answered with two of the next three to pull within 10-4 early in the fourth. Lehigh got goals from senior Kyle Stiefel and Corbett for a 12-4 advantage with 12:27 remaining. Navy scored three unanswered goals the rest of the way, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
T.J. Hanzsche (Malvern Prep) scored once for Navy.
Lehigh held the final edge in shots (33-27) while groundballs were even at 31. Both sides won 11-of-22 faceoffs. Navy was 1-for-2 on the extra man while the Mountain Hawks were 1-for-1. Sophomore goalie Matt Poillon made nine saves while Navy goalies Nolan Hickey and John Connors each had two.
The Mountain Hawks return to action next Saturday when they host Colgate at Goodman Stadium on CBS Sports Network in a rematch of the 2012 Patriot League Championship Game.
Leave a Reply