The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Depth lifts Yale to national title
Bulldogs strike early to gain 1st NCAA lacrosse championship
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Not long after losing to Maryland in the first-round of the NCAA tournament four years ago, a game in which Yale surrendered a late lead, the Bulldogs gathered to watch the Terrapins play in the national championship game.
There wasn’t much difference between the teams, a fact the Bulldogs harped on over the course of the afternoon.
“We made a lot of that,” Yale coach Andy Shay said. “Why can’t we be there?”
Yale’s seniors — freshmen during that 2015 season — would go on to win more games and Ivy League titles than any other class in school history. On Monday, before a crowd of 29,455 at Gillette Stadium, they ensured their legacy would last forever.
The Bulldogs jumped out to an early lead over Duke and never looked back, unloading a deadly combination of depth and skill that resulted in a 13-11 victory and the program’s first NCAA national championship.
It marked the first national title for an Ivy League team since 2009 and the first time in 33 years that a Yale team defeated Duke, a perennial lacrosse power with three national titles since 2010.
Despite four straight Ivy League titles, Yale (17-3) had been unable to translate its success on the big stage. The Bulldogs lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament each of the past three seasons.
“Hate to admit it,” said Yale junior Matt Gaudet, who scored four goals and was the tournament’s most outstanding player. “But we are talented.”
Yale was awarded a national championship in 1883, long before the institution of the NCAA, because it had the best regular-season record in the nation that spring. It’s nothing to get excited about, especially since Yale only had three wins in four games, one of which came via a forfeit by Columbia.
Its road to the title some 135 years later left no doubts.
Two days after demolishing Albany in the national semifinal, jumping out to a quick 7-0 lead and laying 20 goals on one of the country’s stingiest defenses, Yale again started quickly.
Midfielder Jack Tigh had the game’s first two goals, with Gaudet adding another in the first six minutes. But when it appeared Yale was on the verge of another blowout, scoring four of the first five goals of the second half to take a 10-5 lead, Duke clawed its way back.
A slew of Yale penalties and aggressive Duke defense allowed the Blue Devils to seize some momentum and pull within 10-8 with 3:18 to play in the third quarter.
The Bulldogs responded with arguably their two biggest goals of the game. Sophomore Lucas Cotler stopped the bleeding with 1:36 remaining, and after Duke All-American Justin Guterding (two goals, one assist) answered to keep the Yale lead at two, senior midfielder Jason Alessi bounced a wicked shot past the Blue Devil goalie with 26 seconds left to make it 12-9 heading into the fourth quarter.
“They were winning face-offs, they had more possessions and we weren’t picking up some of the ground balls we would have liked to pick up,” Duke midfielder Brad Smith said. “It’s tough to play behind against anybody. They were smart with the ball and took the air out of us a little bit.”
Gaudet, who scored six goals in the semifinal win, got a goal midway through the fourth to give Yale a four-goal lead. Duke would cut the deficit to two with a pair of rapid-fire goals with three minutes remaining. But it was too little, too late.
Yale’s vaunted offense has pummeled the opposition all season with Reeves,
sophomore Jackson Morrill and Gaudet leading the charge.
Reeves, the nation’s leading scorer with 115 points, is the odd-on favorite to win the Tewaaraton Award as the country’s top player later this month. Morrill, whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather are in the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, and Gaudet, thanks to a late season charge, both finished with over 40 goals on the season.
Yet in the biggest game of the season, Yale’s depth carried the Bulldogs to victory. Reeves, defended well by Duke’s JT GilesHarris, had a goal and three assists that all came between the late-second and early-third quarter. Morrill, also covered closely, had an assist. Gaudet got his points.
But it was the secondary scoring from Tigh (three goals), Joey Sessa, Brendan Rooney, Cotler and freshman Brian Tevlin that sunk Duke.
Yale’s defensive effort was equally brilliant, including the play of freshman goalie Jack Starr (nine saves) and seniors Tyler Warner, Alessi, Jerry O’Connor and freshman Chris Fake.
Expectations were enormous all season for Yale, mostly because of its 10man senior class. The guys who’d come so close as freshmen — who’d been bounced from the firstround three straight seasons — were now leaders of a team oozing with talent from the top of the roster to the bottom.
“We were one of the better teams at the start of the season, and now we’re the best at the end,” Shay said. “That, to me, is mission accomplished.”