In its third conference game of the season, the men’s lacrosse team dropped a crucial contest to No. 15 Penn. The Quakers outscored Bruno 3-1 in the final 10 minutes of the game to win by a narrow two-goal margin.
In the opening quarter, Penn (5-3, 2-2 Ivy) scored at a frenzied pace, posting five goals — four in the final four minutes — to take a 5-3 lead.
“A lot of their early goals were one-on-ones” with goalie Jack Kelly ’16, said Stephen Chmil ’14. “They were pretty much garbage goals coming off turnovers when we were trying to clear the ball. They kept picking up the ground balls and getting on the break.”
The teams exchanged goals in the second quarter, leading to a 6-4 halftime score. Midfielder and faceoff specialist Tommy Capone ’14 dominated in the first half, winning two-thirds of his draws. Capone finished the game having won 13 of 20 faceoffs and collecting five ground balls.
Capone “has been doing an awesome job all year,” Chmil said. “He crushed it against Princeton, and he played really well against Penn. It’s huge, knowing we have the ability to score and get the ball right back to our offense for another shot at scoring.”
After a disappointing first quarter of defense, the Bears (6-4, 1-2) stepped up the intensity in the second and third quarters, Chmil said, allowing just two goals in the two frames.
“The big difference was the ground balls on our defensive end,” Chmil said. “We started to collect more of those as the game went on, as opposed to them taking shots and picking up the ground ball for second chances.”
The Quakers held a 7-5 lead heading into the fourth. But back-to-back goals from Sam Hurster ’14 within one minute of each other leveled the game at seven. Forty-five seconds later, Penn responded with a man-up goal to regain the lead at 8-7. The score would not change for nearly five minutes, when Penn slotted another man-up shot past Kelly to extend its lead. One final Quaker goal 90 seconds later allowed Penn to hold on for the win.
“Two of those goals were man-up, and they were two pretty questionable calls,” Chmil said. “The third one came when we were really pressuring them trying to get the ball back, so one of their guys slipped one of our defenders and scored.”
Bruno’s offense played a sloppy game, Chmil said. The Bears turned it over 21 times while taking only 13 shots on goal. By comparison, Penn found the target on 18 of its 37 shots, challenging Kelly throughout the game.
On Friday, the Bears will return home and square off against another conference opponent, No. 14 Yale (6-3, 2-2). Bruno has just three Ivy League games left on its schedule, making this matchup with the Bulldogs a must-win, Chmil said. Bruno sits in fifth place in the Ivy standings but is hoping to improve its seeding heading into the conference tournament.
“We need to get back to how we played against Princeton,” Chmil said. “We need to settle the ball down, play smart and pick our spots. Yale is an awesome team, so every aspect of our game is going to have to be on point if we want to win.”
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