Strong fourth quarter earns Jumbos victory over Owls

The men's lacrosse team defeated the Keene State Owls 22-16 on Tuesday at Bello Field to improve to 2-0 on the season. The No. 1 ranked Jumbos, behind by two with a minute left in the third quarter, scored nine goals in the fourth quarter to run away with the victory. Junior attack John Uppgren led the Jumbos with 11 points on the game: seven goals and four assists.

The Jumbos started the game off strong, scoring the first three goals within the first five minutes. Keene State then bounced back outscoring Tufts 4-2 in the rest of the quarter to decrease its deficit to one. Although the Jumbos outshot the Owls 13-10 in the quarter, the Jumbos suffered eight turnovers in the final 10 minutes, making it difficult to maintain possession.

The game would then go back and forth for the next two quarters, with each team going on their respective runs. Keene State used two big 3-0 runs in both the second and third quarters to stay in the game as Tufts attempted to pull away several times. By the end of the third quarter, the Owls had taken a 14-13 lead.

The fourth quarter, however, was all about the Jumbos; they outscored the Owls 9-2 to take the victory. Tufts used a similar run on Saturday when they defeated Middlebury 17-10, going on a 7-2 run in the fourth. Five different Jumbos scored in the quarter and Uppgren tallied five of his seven goals in the period.

“The biggest factor in those games is our experience,” coach John Daly said. “We’ve been in those situations before and our biggest goal is to play a 60-minute game. Maybe we got outplayed somewhere in those 60 minutes. Yesterday we came out and we were up 3-0, and Saturday we came out and we were down 3-0. I think it’s just the experience of our guys to know it’s a 60-minute game, to know everyone on our schedule can beat us and that we need that 60-minute effort.”

Junior midfielder Conor Helfrich also spoke of the need for the Jumbos to play a full game.

“We have had some comebacks in the first two games,” Helfrich said. “Obviously we want to go on those runs earlier in the game and put teams away earlier. We don’t like to let teams hang around and think they have a chance. I wouldn’t attribute it to one thing here or there. I just think that we need to start executing better throughout the game and put together a full 60 minutes.”

Helfrich was the game leader in ground balls with 20 and was outstanding on face-offs, winning 35 of 41. Tufts saw contributions from a variety of players, including junior attack Ben Andreycak, who had four goals and an assist, and junior midfielder Garrett Clarke, who had two goals and an assist. Senior midfielder Peter Gill also poured in four goals for the Jumbos.

Although Tufts has started the season with two straight victories for the second consecutive year, the team still has a long way to go to reach the level of its championship play of last season.

“We’re clearly not playing our best lacrosse,” Daly said. “We’ve had a lot of sloppy stick skills that we need to clean up and general fundamentals on offense and defense that we need to get into better sync with and improve on those schemes and make plays.”

A number of players have had trouble finding their roles on the field this season, which has posed another issue for the Jumbos.

“When any player in our program really tries to do too much or do more than what their role is, that’s when we’ve struggled,” Daly said. “We’ve seen that on the offense end of the field and on the defense end of the field and that’s something we’re addressing right now.”

In other news, senior co-captain Cole Bailey was recently named the lone Div. III player on the men’s 2015 Tewaaraton Award watch list. This puts Bailey in contention for the honor of top men’s lacrosse player in the nation, the lacrosse equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. Bailey has been selected as a First Team All-American the past two seasons and was the Most Outstanding Player in last year's 12-9 NCAA final victory over Salisbury.

Bailey is a member of a strong class of experienced seniors for the Jumbos who aim to provide leadership as the team looks to defend its national title.

“There is great leadership all around on this team, from number one on the depth chart to number fifty every guy is buying in,” said Helfrich. “We have a senior leadership. The entire senior class are all extremely talented players, but also extremely gifted leaders. I think that the leadership throughout the team is a key factor in our first two wins and the season going forward.”

Tufts' next game is away tomorrow against 2-2 Stevens at 12:00 pm.