The men’s lacrosse team lost to Ivy League foe No. 2 Cornell University this Saturday in its 2014 home opener 19-4. The win kept Cornell’s (9-0, 3-0 Ivy) season-opening winning streak alive and dropped the Big Green to 1-5, 0-2 Ivy on the season.
Cornell came out firing, scoring twice in the first two and a half minutes. The lead had swelled to four by the time attackman Adam Philie ’17 scored with 5:08 left in the first quarter to put the Big Green on the board.
Another Big Red shot less than a minute later brought the score to 5-1 at the end of the period.
“We didn’t get off to a good start, and that definitely led to our demise,” Mike Muller ’15 said. “We had some energy stripped away from us, so we were a little sluggish.”
The second quarter proceeded in a similar fashion, with Cornell scoring four goals in the first 10 minutes. Attackman Adam Fishman ’15 broke through the Big Red defense with 2:09 remaining in the period to score his first goal of the season.
But Cornell quickly responded with another goal just 13 seconds later.
Even with the score at 10-2 going into halftime, the Big Green players remained positive, midfielder Jibran Ahmad ’16 said.
“Throughout the game, everyone felt confident that we had the chance to get back into it,” Ahmad said. “It was such a high-scoring game, but we had the mentality of taking each goal one-by-one.”
The Big Red did not allow the Dartmouth men much relief after the intense first half.
Cornell opened the third period with three goals in the first four minutes before Fishman scored off an assist by co-captain Phil Hession ’15.
Although Fishman assisted Jack McCormick ’17 on another Big Green goal almost four minutes later, the Big Green could not break into the scoring column again for the game. The Big Red added another goal before the end of the third quarter, and then followed this with five in the last quarter to pull away and win 19-4.
“Cornell is a very good team.” Ahmad said. “They have very good players individually, but they play better as a group. We match up with them one-on-one, but they play very well as a team.”
Goalie Blair Friedensohn ’16 blocked six shots during his approximately 24 minutes in goal, before his teammate Ham Sonnenfeld ’16 blocked another six in the remaining 36 minutes.
Hession logged a game-high seven ground balls while Robert Osgood ’15 posted four. Overall, the Big Green lost the ground ball battle 33-29.
Clears and man-up opportunities doomed the Big Green. The team went 16-22 on clears while the Big Red posted a perfect 20-20. Dartmouth’s man-down defense was better, holding a potent Cornell man-up team to just 3-9.
However, the Dartmouth offense could only manage one goal on six opportunities with the man advantage. Cornell outshot the Big Green 50-36.
“We definitely have some weaknesses,” Muller said. “We turned the ball over a little too much, and we didn’t possess as much as we would have liked. On defense, we can also change it up a little bit.”
This Saturday, the Big Green will take on Yale University at home.
