In its second season back, Eastern University Men's Lacrosse is looking to secure its best season finish in the PAC. The Shenandoah Hornets, also in the midst of their best men's lacrosse season ever, entered today with the same aspirations.
The visiting Hornets scored a pair of goals in the closing two and a half minutes of the game to earn a hard fought 9-8 win and improve to 3-1 in the PAC.
Ben O'Donnell scored the first of his four goals just over a minute into the game to give Eastern a quick 1-0 lead, but both defenses tightened up, and the next 12 minutes saw neither team score. In the final minute off the first period, James Gonzalez scored his first of two goals to tie the game at one. Zach Rivest had four of his 11 saves in the opening period. Michael O'Brien stopped five Eastern shots in the first.
The second quarter opened up. Gonzalez scored fifty seconds in on a Teddy Rogers assist to put the Hornets up, but the Eagles struck back quickly on a Kyle Dresser goal. Eastern took the lead at 3-2 midway through the period on another O'Donnell tally, but the Hornets took advantage of man-up situations to score a pair of late first half goals and take a 4-3 advantage into the dressing room.
The third quarter belonged to the Eagles as they scored back to back goals at the eleven minute mark. O'Donnell scored his third of the game on a nice feed from Nick Mandia and then set up Dresser just eight seconds later after Jimmy Caiola won the face-off. The Eastern sophomore was 13-20 on face-offs for the day. O'Donnell then gave the Eagles the only two goal lead of the day on a pass from Dresser with five minutes to play in the period.
The Hornets stole a goal back with 14 seconds left in the third on a fast break goal from Stephen Mayor, who scored four goals in the final 15:14 of the game. mayor scored his second four minutes into the fourth to make the game 6-6.
One minute later, Mandia gave the Eagles a 7-6 lead on an unassisted goal, but Mayor answered right back at the midway point of the fourth. Kyle Dresser scored his third of the day to give the Eagles an 8-7 lead with 3:22 on the clock, but a pair of late Hornet goals proved too much.
Eastern returns to action Monday with a non-league game against Christopher Newport University.
