Still, that didn’t stop Bowdoin from going on the road and beating Bates, 14-10, in a key NESCAC men’s lacrosse game at Garcelon Field on Wednesday.
The Polar Bears (8-1, 5-1 NESCAC), ranked No. 13 in the latest USILA Division III Coaches poll, produced an avalanche of goals to start the fourth quarter, turning a 7-7 game after three periods into an 11-7 advantage just over four minutes into the final frame.
Matthew Crowell scored the first two, then Brett Kujala and Clayton Wright both got in on the action.
“Their faceoff guy (Sam Carlin) started to win some faceoffs. And they finished their opportunities and we didn’t,” Bates coach Peter Lasagna said.
Jack Allard pulled the No. 6 Bobcats (8-2, 4-2) within two by scoring a pair of goals, cutting it to 11-9 with five minutes left. Then the Polar Bears responded with three goals of their own (two from Kujala, another from Daniel Buckman) to pull away at 14-9.
Jake Walsh scored the final goal for Bates, but it was too little, too late.
The Bobcats started the game much better than they finished it. Charlie Fay scored 79 seconds in, then again at the two-minute mark to put The Bobcats quickly up 2-0.
“He was feeling it,” Lasagna said.
The Polar Bears tied the game up by the midway point of the opening quarter, but Andrew Melvin gave Bates the lead after one thanks to a behind-the-back pass from Fay with 50.8 seconds to go in the first.
In a sign of things to come, Bowdoin scored the first three goals of the second to go from a 3-2 deficit to a 5-3 lead. Fay kept Bates within striking distance with a hat-trick goal in the final two minutes of the first half. Melvin then fed Clarke Jones for a game-tying goal with 0.05 seconds left before halftime to make it 5-5.
The teams played the third quarter even. Max Breschi opened the second-half scoring for Bates, then Kujala and Peter Reuter scored midway through the third to give the Polar Bears the lead back. Allard made it 7-7 heading into the fourth on a pass from Fay with 1:33 to go in the third.
The Bobcats had plenty of chances to score more than their 10 goals, but they went 0 for 10 in man-up situations.
“We had a ton of extra-man opportunities at really critical times. We feel really good about our extra-man team, but their man-down team beat our extra-man team today,” said Lasagna, who expects his team to score on about half of its man-up chances.
Leading the Polar Bears’ man-down team was junior goalie Peter Mumford, who stopped 20 of 30 shots to earn the win.
“I thought he played great,” Lasagna said. “I think part of it was him, part of it was us maybe not making great shots. I felt like when we moved him we had more success than when we didn’t.”
Freshman Mitchell Drake got the starting nod in net for the Bobcats, while senior Joe Faria deals with injuries. Drake made eight saves on 22 Bowdoin shots on goal.
The artificial turf at Garcelon looked much different when the final horn sounded then it did on the opening faceoff, with snow accumulating throughout the second half. Lasagna said there were some issues with footing, but overall thought it was a fairly clean game considering the conditions.
But in the end, it was Polar Bears — not Bobcats — who were celebrating in the snow, ending Bates’ four-game win streak.
wkramlich@sunjournal.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
