Delaware Stunned as Mt. St. Mary's Strikes Late for 12-10 Upset Victory Over No. 16 Blue Hens
February 25, 2012
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Photos Courtesy of Chris Permar
NEWARK, Del. -- The University of Delaware men's lacrosse team forged the sixth tie of the game with 6:54 left to play, but Mt. St. Mary's reeled off three straight goals in a span of less than four minutes and moved on to a 12-10 upset victory over the Blue Hens at a blustery Delaware Stadium Saturday afternoon.
No. 16 ranked Delaware (2-3), which dropped its third straight game, lost to Mt. St. Mary's for the first time ever in 11 all-time meetings. The game was played under a wind advisory as gusts reached as high as 40 miles per hour during the contest.
Mt. St. Mary's (1-0), the defending Northeast Conference champion coming off a 9-6 mark in 2011, looked sharp in its season-opener. After Delaware's Sean Finegan scored with 6:54 left to knot the score at 9-9, the Mount reeled off three straight, taking the lead for good on a goal by Andrew Scalley with 5:19 left.
Brett Schmidt scored a man-up goal three minutes later and Daniel Stranix scored his third goal of the game with 1:47 left to complete the upset.
Delaware, which dropped a tough 8-6 battle to No. 3 ranked Johns Hopkins Tuesday night in Baltimore, scored a goal with 56 seconds left to cut the gap to 12-10 but could not come through again.
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Senior All-American candidate Grant Kaleikau (at left) led the Blue Hens with two goals and two assists while redshirt freshman Brian Kormandy (top right) scored twice and dished out an assist and senior Andrew Tanneberger contributed a goal and an assist. Blue Hen goalkeeper Chris Herbert posted nine saves while Dan Cooney won 14 of 24 faceoffs.
Stranix led Mt. St. Mary's with three goals while Schmidt and Scalley each tallied twice. Eight different Mountaineer players scored a goal. Goalkeeper Chris Klaiber turned back 13 Delaware shots to post the win.
Delaware dominated almost every category but could not pull out the win as the Hens lost at home for just the third time in its last 14 appearances since last season. The Hens held a 42-29 advantage in shots, led 33 to 28 in groundballs, won 15 of the 26 faceoffs, and had one less turnover.
"We dominated the stats but we lost the game," said Delaware head coach Bob Shillinglaw, who was honored before the game for his 300th career victory that he earned in the Hens' season opening win over Detroit back on Feb. 4. "We played hard but our execution just wasn't good enough. We knew Mt. St. Mary's had a talented attack. We didn't get our transition game going today and when we did, we just didn't finish off our shots."
The hotly-contested matchup featured six ties and three lead changes and no team ever led by more than two goals until the final minutes.
Delaware jumped out to a 3-2 lead but Mt. St. Mary’s scored the final two goals of the opening stanza and the first tally of the second quarter to take a 4-3 lead. The Hens answered with consecutive goals from Kaleikau and Tanneberger before the Mount sent the game into halftime tied at 5-5 on a goal by Stanix with 1:06 left before the break.
The Mountaineers opened the second half with two early goals to push the lead to two goals before Kaleikau tallied with 4:08 left in the third stanza to narrow the gap to 7-6 heading into the final frame.
The final quarter featured seven goals and two more ties before the Mountaineers finally prevailed. Mt. St. Mary’s took another two-goal lead early in the quarter but Delaware fought back as Kormandy scored with 7:41 left and then fed Finegan for a goal with 6:54 remaining to knot the score at 9-9.
But Mt. St. Mary’s controlled the action from there as Scalley scored his second goal of the day with 5:19 to give the Mountaineers the lead for good and Schmidt followed with a man-up goal at the 2:13 mark. Stranix clinched the victory with his third goal at the 1:47 mark. Delaware got a man-up goal from Danny Keane with 56 seconds remaining, his fifth man-up score of the season, but the Hens never got closer.
Delaware will look to snap the streak this Saturday when the Blue Hens host 9th-ranked Villanova at 12 noon at Delaware Stadium.
