Bulldogs bullish
Handle Great Danes to earn spot in final
FOXBORO — Yale’s potent offensive attack trio of senior Ben Reeves (four goals, four assists), plus sophomores Matt Gaudet (six goals) and Jackson Morrill (three goals, five assists) combined to lead the Bulldogs into a berth in tomorrow’s NCAA championship game with a 20-11 victory over Albany yesterday at Gillette Stadium.
“You have to respect everybody on that side of the ball. The list goes on. Those guys make it easy for me,” said Reeves, the fourth player taken in the recent Major League Lacrosse draft.
The victory gave the 10 seniors on Yale a stellar record of 50-17 with three Ivy titles, and three consecutive NCAA appearances. The win puts Yale (16-3) in range of its first NCAA title in men’s lacrosse.
“It was a hard-fought game. I’m proud of my guys grinding as much as they did,” said Yale coach Andy Shay. “They’re our biggest rival outside of our league.”
No. 2 Albany (16-3), making its first appearance in the Final Four, squandered a four-point showing from senior attack Connor Fields, who moved to No. 4 all-time in NCAA Div. 1 history with 199 tallies.
Fields, who overcame a serious knee injury, finished the season with 34 goals. Freshman Tehoka Nanticoke scored his 50th of the season.
“In the first couple of quarters we had a lot of mental mistakes, throwing the ball away, missing passes. We just had a lot of mental errors and got away from the game plan,” Fields said.
The third-seeded Bulldogs, who also defeated New England schools Bryant, Fairfield, Dartmouth, Brown and UMass (NCAA first round) this season, used their decided edge in overall team speed to stake a 4-0 lead in the opening five minutes on goals by junior midfielder John Daniggelis, Morrill, Reeves, and Gaudet. That forced Albany coach Scott Marr to use a timeout at 4:24 to settle his squad.
Following the timeout, Yale connected three times (Morrill, Gaudet, and Reeves) to extend the margin to 7-0 at 10:26 as Albany looked out of sync. Marr lifted goalkeeper JD Colarusso (six saves) and inserted Nate Siekierski.
“It’s a team game. Some of those shots were not his fault. I wanted to give him a break, get his head together. It was kind of a barrage there. You can’t fault him for all those shots 5 or 6 feet away,” said Albany’s Marr.
The Great Danes then got going as junior midfielder Sean Eccles scored twice, while sophomore TD Lerlan and Fields also notched goals to make it a 9-4 game.
Following a Yale timeout, Gaudet scored 28 seconds apart to give him five goals on five shots to that point. Yale’s Morrill scored one second before halftime to hand Yale a 12-5 intermission advantage.
Reeves made it 15-7 at 8:27 for his 60th goal and registered his fifth goal with 5.5 seconds remaining in the third quarter.
“I just thought we had the ball which is a big part of it,” said Shay. “We decided to shoot as intelligently and efficiently as we could. He (Colarusso) is a great player, an All-American. We worked hard to solve him.”