After last week's 19-4 romp over Bowdoin, the men's lacrosse team came into Saturday's key NESCAC battle against another Maine rival, Bates, hoping to keep that momentum rolling towards a deep playoff run.
The Jumbos (8-4, 5-2 NESCAC) did just that as they outlasted the Bobcats (2-5, 3-8) in Lewiston, Maine in a 16-10 victory on Saturday afternoon at Campus Avenue Field. Five goals broke open a 5-5 tie in the second quarter, and the Tufts defense clamped down in the second half to move the team one step closer to securing a home game in the NESCAC Tournament.
The offense was led by a trio of four-goal performances from freshman attackman D.J. Hessler, junior attackman Clem McNally and senior midfielder Matt Caple. Senior midfielder Connor Ginsberg spread around three assists, and Hessler dished out two more.
The Jumbo offense, flying high after a 19-goal showing in last week's win over Bowdoin, again found its stride by sticking to its game and outworking the Bobcats in transition.
"They threw a lot of different looks at us, but we just kept chugging along," McNally said. "They weren't really able to slow us down and when they did, our transition offense kept the scores coming. We continued to push the tempo and kept them on their heels by moving the ball up and down the field."
While the three four-goal outpourings were the day's headlines, a pair of star performances away from the offensive end fueled the Jumbos as well. Sophomore midfielder Mike Droesch went 17-of-30 at the faceoff circle, and junior Matt Harrigan put in a solid game in goal with 15 saves.
"Guys like Caple, Droesch and Harrigan played awesome games for us," junior quad-captain Jordan Yarboro said. "Our man-up team also played well and that was a key to our success. Our offense carried us in the first half, and then the defense took over in the second half."
Droesch has grown into one of the top faceoff men in all of Div. III, and Saturday's game was Exhibit A. He was pitted against four different Bobcats in the faceoff, instead of the traditional one or two.
"Mike did an awesome job on the faceoffs all day," McNally said. "He handled a bunch of different faceoff guys who all have different styles and techniques. It's impressive because he had to constantly adjust to their different faceoff styles, while the opponent already knew what he was going to be facing."
Bates' schedule left a full two weeks open heading into the crucial matchup against the Jumbos, but the extra prep time yielded few results.
"We had a full week to prepare ourselves, so we were well equipped coming into Saturday's game," Harrigan said. "We knew exactly what we needed to do and our execution was great. We scored when we needed to, and we stopped them when we needed to."
While the Jumbos put up 10 goals in the first half, including five in a row to jump out to a 10-5 lead late in the second quarter, it would be the Tufts defense that closed out the game with a strong second half.
The defense buckled down over the intermission, and the proof was in the Bobcats' shot percentage, which fell drastically after halftime. In the first period the Bobcats were 6-for-15, while in the second half they tallied just four goals on 23 attempts.
"The first half was a real hard-fought battle, but our defense really shut them down in the third quarter after we got up by a few," Harrigan said. "It was a story of two halves: The first was marked by explosive offense, and the second half was dominated by our defense."
"We slid pretty well against them on defense," Yarboro added. "While we made some sloppy plays at first, we stepped it up in the second half. Our man-down unit could've played a little bit better but that's something we can work on."
Bates senior attackman Bryan Frates scored the first of his three goals at 13:44 in the first period.
The Jumbos quickly fired back with three goals, the last two from Caple, to go up 3-1 at the 7:16 mark.
Bobcats senior attackman Justin Simon notched his only two goals of the game before Caple scored his third of the game to tie it at five apiece.
The second quarter saw the Jumbos run off five straight tallies, all from different scorers.
Bates scored one last goal from senior attackman Mike Medeiros with 0:21 left in the first half to close it out at 10-6 Jumbos.
The Jumbos rode three McNally goals the rest of the way en route to their second decisive NESCAC win in eight days.
The next contest for the squad will come tonight at Bello Field as the Jumbos take on the Amherst Lord Jeffs, who sit at 2-5 in league play and 7-6 overall.
A win would move Tufts into a tie with Wesleyan for second place in the conference standings, just one game behind leader Middlebury.
"While they've lost a lot of games recently, they've been close scores," Yarboro said. "Amherst always brings their best game against us so it'll be a real fun game. We hope that we can get as many fans as possible down to the game to create a great atmosphere."
