Up 10-4 at the start of the fourth quarter, it looked as though Wednesday night's PAC men's lacrosse game at Immaculata was in hand. The host Mighty Macs scored four straight, including three with man advantage situations to cut into the Eastern lead. Ben O'Donnell stopped the Immaculata run with his third of the game, and the Eagles secured the second spot in the PAC playoffs with a 12-9 win.
The game began with both teams searching for openings and neither team generating many great scoring chances. Immaculata capitalized on their chance two minutes in to take a 1-0 lead. The Eagles continued to look for chances, but had to kill the only penalty of the opening period before they could level the score.
Michael Hofmeister took a pass from Michael Ryan and fired a 15 yard shot just under the bar to tie the game with eight minutes to play. Ryan gave the Eagles the lead for good just 51 seconds later on a dodging run and near post shot from in close. Ryan created the third goal as well. The junior eluded several checks at the edge of the box, and after falling down twice split a pair of defenders and fired a missile at the top edge of the goal. Andrew Sim, the Immaculata goalie, made the initial save, but a rebound popped up in the air and out of the crease. Nate Trunfio calmly reached up for the ball and deposited in the back of the net for his first of two on the day.
Trunfio earned an assist on Nick Mandia's goal to close out the first period. Josh McClelland created the chance with a strong defensive play and quick transition in the midfield. McClelland found Trunfio on the left side of the cage, and Trunfio drew the action to his side before flipping a pass to Mandia for the tidy finish. The Eagles held an 11-6 edge in shots for the opening period.
Immaculata scored first in the second period. O'Donnell lifted the Eagles to a 5-2 lead with a sprawling finish of a Hofmeister pass. O'Donnell finished his shot with a somersault at the edge of the crease. Matt Colello answered another Immaculata goal with a long range missile through traffic to give the Eagles a 6-3 lead at the break.
The Eagles put together some of their best attacking lacrosse in the opening ten minutes of the second half as they scored four straight to gain a 10-3 lead. Mandia set up Trunfio to open the period. Dave Mojica scored his fourth of the year as he picked up a rebound of his own shot. Jimmy Caiola scored eight seconds later after collecting his own face-off and sprinting straight to the crease .
O'Donnell ended the run on a pass from Mandia. Mandia, the Eastern single-season record holder for total points and total assists added to his number with a two goal and three assist performance. The hosts began to cut into the lead with their first of four man-up goals as both teams got careless with the ball. The period ended with the Eagles holding on to a 10-4 lead.
Five penalties and eight turnovers opened the door for the Mighty Macs to threaten, and they cut the deficit to 10-8. Evan Ridington forced a huge turnover with just under five to play that ended an extended Immaculata possession and gave the Eagles' defense a chance to breathe. Out of the at possession, O'Donnell finished his team-best 32nd of the year on another Hofmeister assist.
O'Donnell said of the play after the game, "We have been working through pressure situations like that in practice, and we had confidence that we could change the momentum. We had to step up and we did." Seconds later, Mandia scored his second of the day on a Trunfio pass to again stretch the Eastern lead to four.
The Mighty Macs fired 40 shots for the game to 36 for the Eagles. Zach Rivest stopped nine shots to earn the win. The Eagles play Misericordia in their regular season finale at home on Saturday.
Box Score
