A little home cooking always seems to ease one's troubles, and the men's lacrosse team decided that a feast was in order when it returned to Bello Field Tuesday night.
The nationally ranked No. 10 Jumbos (9-1, 5-1) rebounded from their first loss of the season, a frustrating 11-9 defeat at the hands of Trinity on Saturday, with an encouraging 15-4 win over regional rival Western New England College (WNEC). The Golden Bears (6-2, 3-0) came into the contest ranked one notch ahead of their hosts at No. 9 in the national Div. III rankings, but this showdown was all brown and blue.
Sophomore attackman D.J. Hessler paced the Jumbos with five goals and three assists, continuing his impressive campaign and pushing his team-leading point total and assists tally to 58 and 32, respectively. Classmate and linemate Ryan Molloy posted a hat trick, with all three of his goals coming on assists from Hessler. Junior midfielder and tri-captain Mike Droesch recorded two goals and two assists.
"It was a great confidence boost to get this win," senior goalie Matt Harrigan said. "We have three ranked opponents coming up now and after the Trinity game we were maybe questioning ourselves a little bit. But this was a great way to come out and reassert ourselves on both ends of the field; it was a great team effort."
Tufts jumped to a quick 2-0 lead in the game's opening two minutes on Hessler's first two scores of the evening. After a goal from WNEC freshman Patrick White at 8:25, Hessler and Molloy each added one goal apiece to push the score to 4-1 at the first intermission.
Droesch and freshman midfielder Nick Rhoads played integral roles in the Jumbos' first-quarter success, helping to maintain possession of the ball by winning five of the six draws in the frame. Overall, the two took 14 of the 23 draws against the visiting Golden Bears.
"I don't think it's as much about the offensive play specifically as it is about our success on faceoffs," senior tri-captain Clem McNally said of his team's offensive prowess this season. "The draw guys, as well as the wing guys, have been really great at working together to get us the ball on a consistent basis. We sometimes don't even have time to get the offensive midfielders on the field because the defensive middies are winning the ball so quickly and moving it up field so fast. As a result a lot of our goal production is coming from the attackmen or the guys who are winning the ball for us on the faceoff."
WNEC worked hard to wear down the Jumbos defense in the second quarter, tallying two scores in close on Harrigan to cut the Golden Bears' deficit to one with just over five minutes remaining in the first half.
But as the Jumbos have done on countless occasions this season, the offense responded with a series of unanswered goals. Five separate goal-scorers beat WNEC freshman netminder Brewster Knowlton in a 1:41 span to lift Tufts to a 9-3 halftime lead.
Knowlton, who is listed at 5-foot-6, posed a unique problem for Tufts shooters. At that height, Knowlton is naturally better suited to stop low-bounce shots that are usually more likely to beat a goaltender that is slightly taller. Yet the Jumbos had no problem adjusting once they got into the flow of the game.
"[Knowlton] was pretty good last night, especially because he was smothering everything that we threw at his feet," McNally said. "However, good shots will certainly go and when we didn't settle for the easiest look we were able to beat him."
Molloy completed his three-goal effort in the third quarter, notching the game's only two scores in the period to move the score to 11-3. A stingy Tufts defense kept the Golden Bears offensive attack at bay, limiting the visitors to one goal in the second half -- a score by senior Chuck Cartelli early in the fourth quarter. Tufts gave its guests a proper parting gift though, putting together another string of goals to seal the highly important regional victory for the Jumbos.
"Overall we did an incredible job on the defensive end," Harrigan said. "We slid really well and we communicated very efficiently. It was certainly a team effort, and we've worked to find that game all year. I feel like this was our first complete game on defense and we just came out and dominated."
Harrigan put together his best individual effort of the season with 15 saves on just four goals allowed. Yet he attributed the success to his team's focus on limiting high-percentage shots and executing well-timed slides on defense.
"I usually play as well as my defense plays, and they were able to give me a lot of outside shots that I could see really well, which made it a lot easier on me as a goalie," Harrigan said.
With only four games remaining on the team's regular season schedule -- three of which are road contests -- the Jumbos still have the toughest section of their schedule in front of them. The first step toward a playoff run begins Saturday when the team will visit Middlebury (8-1, 5-1) to decide who will remain in first place in the NESCAC standings and maintain the upper hand in hosting the NESCAC playoffs in two weekends.
"We've just got to focus on taking these games one game at a time, and we're already over the WNEC win now because we've got Middlebury coming up next," Harrigan said. "They have the [NESCAC] Player of the Year from last year in [senior] Mike Stone, so that will be a good matchup for [long-stick midfielder and senior] Jordan [Yarboro]. However they have a really young defense so that might be an area of weakness. Their offense is always dangerous, though, so this game will certainly be a battle."
