Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 2/19/23
From Press Release
The Lehigh men’s lacrosse team found itself in an early six-goal hole, but the Mountain Hawks rallied from there to come away with a 19-13 win against Hobart Saturday afternoon at Frank Banko Field.
“It was tough sledding, at least for the first half, ” said head coach Kevin Cassese. “I give a lot of credit to Hobart. They came out and took a fight to us right away. We found ourselves in a pretty deep hole. At one point, it was 10-4, and things weren’t going so well for us.”
This was Lehigh’s second straight win after defeating Fairfield last week. Hobart dropped to 1-1.
The Statesmen took a 2-0 lead early on and held a lead until 6:51 left in the third quarter. After Hobart went up 10-4, Lehigh called a timeout, and the momentum started to swing Lehigh’s way. The Mountain Hawks went on a 4-0 run.
Matt Marker (Allentown Central Catholic, 3G) scored the first goal, Dakota Eierman had the next, and Justin Tiernan netted the final two goals of the first half to cut Hobart’s lead to 10-8 at halftime.
Hobart came out of the half and scored the first goal, but Lehigh went on a 4-0 run from there. Christian Mule’ scored a goal with 2:17 left in the third quarter to put Lehigh up 13-12. That was Lehigh’s first lead of the game, and the Mountain Hawks would dominate from there.
Lehigh ended the game on a 7-1 run.
Mule’ and Scott Cole both had six points for Lehigh. Mule’ had five goals and one assist, while Cole had four goals and two assists. All four of Cole’s goals were scored in the second half.
Mike Sisselbeger (Southern Lehigh) was 17-of-33 at the stripe on Saturday. First-year Richard Checo tallied a career-high of four caused turnovers, while first-year Luke McAuliffe recorded two caused turnovers. Checo also tallied six ground balls.
Junior goalie Nick Pecora made 12 saves for the second straight game.
Delaware 16, St. John’s 9
The Blue Hens picked up their first home win of the season at Delaware Stadium.
With the win, the Blue Hens improve to 3-0 on the season and are 20-4 at Delaware Stadium since 2019.
After a close first half that saw Delaware lead 6-5, the Blue Hens opened the second half on a 6-1 run. In the third period, freshman attackman Finn Morgan (Haddonfield-NJ) got things started with back-to-back goals in the 34th minute. Tye Kurtz and JP Ward joined the scoring frenzy with beautiful goals in the 36th and 44th minutes, respectively, while and Clay Miller and Jason Kolar closed the run with goals in the 43rd and 45th minutes, respectively.
St. John’s wouldn’t go away quietly as it cut the Blue Hens’ lead to 12-8 in the fourth. However, the Blue Hens finished the game on a 4-1 spurt with goals coming off the hands of Ward, Tye Kurtz, Jason Seiter, and Cam Acchione to settle the 16-9 final.
Individually, the Blue Hens were led by Tye Kurtz, who finished with five goals and one assist. Ward dished out a career-high five assists to go along with two goals. Morgan posted his first-career hat trick in his first-career collegiate start. Jason Kolar had his second multi-goal performance of the season finishing two goals while Clay Miller had three assists to go with his first goal of the season.