Today we’re going to do something different because we had a big upset in the DIII ranks so I’m going to start today’s show out with #2 Salisbury hitting the road to take on #7 Gettysburg. Lots of people were wondering if Salisbury deserved the #1 ranking after RIT needed OT to take down someone they probably should have beat by 10. Well Gettysburg put that talk to rest.
#2 Salisbury – 10
#7 Gettysburg – 12
Gettysburg came out and held a 1 or 2 goal lead most of the first half, but Salisbury kept battling back and had things knotted up at 6’s by the half. The Gulls would outscore the the Bullets 3-1 over the 3rd quarter and with 9:12 left in the 4th quarter would take a 10-8 lead off a nice speed dodge by Cross Ferrara, his 3rd of the game. He dodged his man from X and just sprinted past him and scored on the wrap up the right side. The momentum seemed to be with Salisbury at this stage.
After Kieran Ward got Gettysburg back to within a goal, Jack Dunleavy would score a natural hatrick and score the games final 3 goals. His 4th of the game came with 6:32 left, knotting things up at 10’s. Kieran Ward notched the assist, dodging into the middle of the field from the left wing and found Dunleavy down low. NOTE, Dunleavy is listed at 5’9”, I’m not sure he’s really that tall and Ward is 6’3” and 215, a monster standing beside the little guy.
But the little guy was slippery as 3 minutes later he got loose again, this time shading to the right off the low crease and George Raymond found him for his 5th of the game and Gettysburg is up by a goal with just 3:38 seconds left in the contest.
Dunleavy scored the dagger, a man up goal with 1:13 left in the game getting lost on the back side just above goal line extended on the left, another great feed by George Raymond through a sea of Gull defenders and that’s the ballgame.
Dunleavy finished the game with 6 goals and an assist off 8 shots. Raymond had a goal and two helpers and the giant Kieran Ward went for 2 goals and a dish.
Jonathan Moshe was very good at the dot for the bullets winning 14 of 25 with 6 groundballs and no turnovers, meaning he got quite a bit of help from his wings and the Gettysburg goaltender Chase Morgan stopped 11 of the 21 shots he faced on the day winning both the goalie battle and getting the W in cage.
Gettysburg improves to 2-0 and Salisbury drops to 3-1. I’d expect Gettysburg to make a move up the polls to either the #2 or #3 spot and Salisbury will probably slip to somewhere between #4 and #7.
#12 North Carolina – 19
#19 Syracuse – 13
Syracuse struck first off an Owen Hiltz goal from Alex Simmons just 1 minute and a second into the contest, but Carolina would put up 3 goals over just under a 4 minute span to take a 3-1 lead after freshman James Matan scored his 3rd goal of the season.
Syracuse would answer that Carolina run by scoring 3 consecutive goals of their own taking the lead back 4-3, but the Heels would score 6 of the games next 7 goals taking a 9-5 advantage and never really looked back from there.
Great bounce back win for Carolina after losing to Ohio State and only putting up 5 goals. Syracuse’s defense is not the same caliber as Ohio State’s and it showed as Carolina outshot Syracuse 49 to 42 (36 to 25 on cage) and shot 38% as a team against a very good goalie in Will Mark.
Andrew Tyeryar won 15 of 28 draws and the Heels won 19 of 35 overall so on paper Richie USA held his own. But I felt like he had 2 or 3 turnovers after winning draws that didn’t show up in the stat book. The Syracuse defense has proven it isn’t good enough to get by with a faceoff guy that “loses more than he wins”. His ACC foes are only going to get tougher as he’ll have to face Jake Naso and Petey LaSalla and so on. So the faceoff dot is looking like it will be a problem for Syracuse all season.
Bright side for Syracuse, they were 5 of 10 on extra man opportunities. They have been lights out this season with their man up crew. They are 16 of 24 on the season (66.7%).
Logan McGovern, the Bryant transfer, had a beastly day going for 4 goals and 4 assists off 6 shots, picked up 3 groundballs and only had 1 turnover. Lance Tillman laced 3 goals and had a dish off just 4 shots.
Neither goalie finished the game above .500, but Collin Kreig edged Will Mark slightly in terms of save percentage stopping 12 shots vs 13 goals against. Mark made 17 saves vs 19 goals against.
For Carolina, they have to be happy with this offensive output after that 5 goal outing against the Buckeyes. Everyone played well. 7 players recorded at least 2 points. 5 guys had 3 groundballs or more. 7 players caused a turnover.
For Syracuse, after starting 3-0, the Orange have been humbled by Maryland and now Carolina. Syracuse is certainly a much better team compared to a year ago, and they’ve been a fun watch, but they are young, and some of their veterans aren’t doing enough to pull them out of the basement of the ACC. Not yet anyway.
#14 Duke – 14
#7 Penn – 12
Penn came out hot and took a 2-0 lead 5 minutes into the game off a Gabe Furey goal assisted by Dylan Gergar. That lead would carry into the second quarter as it would take Duke some time to get their offense rolling.
Andrew McAdorey would get Duke on the board with 5:29 left in the 1st quarter. He pressed the Penn defense before everyone was fully set, split a double and stuck it. After Will Stephenson tied things up at 2’s, McAdorey yet again pressed before the Penn defense was fully settled after a broken play and scored giving Duke their first lead of the game, 3-2.
Pivotal play in the game, Duke’s Wilson Stephenson forced a turnover on an ill advised Sam Handley dodge, that sent the ball up the field and Tyler Carpenter dished to Brennan O’Neill to give Duke a 5-2 lead. Stephenson had a hell of a game scoring a goal, picking up 6 groundballs and causing 4 turnovers.
After Penn took that 2-0 lead, Duke scored 8 unanswered before allowing Penn to score a goal as time expired on the half. The game was “kind of” over at half time with Duke up 8-3.
Duke came out and extended that lead scoring the first two goals of the second half and took a 10-3 lead before allowing Penn to go on their first true run of the game. The quakers got things back to within 10-7, and then after giving up another goal managed to climb back to within 2 goals on a couple of occasions, but Duke managed to control things to the end and held on for the 14-12 win.
One thing we’ve learned about Penn over their first 2 games is they shoot like shit. If you’re one of the top 7 shot getters and your name isn’t Cam Rubin, you are shooting under 20%. Dylan Gergar has one of the better shooting percentages of the group at 20%. Sam Handley is finishing the rock at a 14.3% clip and James Shipley is coming in at 10%. That isn’t going to get you a lot of wins.
Jake Naso won 18 of 29 faceoffs, that certainly didn’t help Penn at all. Neither did the fact that Will Helm stopped 19 shots and only gave up 12 goals. They won their battles and it was enough to allow Duke to win the game.
All in all, the Duke defense did a great job bottling up Handley and the bulk of Penn’s offensive threats. Penn did a better job at the faceoff dot in the second half, they outshot Duke overall, but Duke proved to be the better team on the day thanks to that huge first half.
#2 Notre Dame – 15
#17 Georgetown – 8
It was the Eric Dobson show early for Notre Dame as he scored 2 of Notre Dame’s first 3 goals and finished with 3 goals on the day. It was never close as Notre Dame scored early and often and held a 6-3 lead by the end of the first quarter and led 9-3 at the half.
It was a total team effort for the Irish with 5 players each contributing 3 points. Eric Dobson, Chris Kavanaugh and Reilly Gray all scored 3 goals. Quinn McCahon put up 2 goals and a dish and Pat Kavanaugh had a goal and 2 helpers. The scoring was as spread out as it gets and they all shot the ball well, no one lower than 33% on the day.
Notre Dame outshot Georgetown 49 to 33 and held the Hoyas to only 17 “shots on cage”. Good shots were extremely hard to come by as the Irish defense was all over the place and even when they faltered, Liam Entenmann was there to bail them out stopping 9 of the 15 shots he faced on the day.
I had noticed people chirping Tucker Dordevic as if he was part of the reason Gtown had started 0-2 as he’s a “high volume” kind of guy. The the reality was over the first two games Dordevic was one of the only bright spots for the Hoyas offense and was shooting the ball well. In this game, he was 1 of 9 on the day and he wasn’t the only guy on his team that struggled. Brian Minicus was 0-4, Nicky Solomon was 0-3. Georgetown is still struggling to make things happen offensively.
Notre Dame looked very good in what I saw on Twitter. The defense has now forced double digit turnovers in all 3 of their games.
The Hoyas were being touted as one of the favorites to win it all, even by me, and now they are looking at 0-3 and will could potentially drop out of the top 20. Princeton is next.
#9 Maryland – 11
#3 Princeton – 5
Princeton wasn’t able to put up much of a fight against Maryand as the terps jumped out to a 5-1 lead and that was all she wrote. Daniel Maltz sniped a shot from deep with 8:03 left in the 2nd quarter to give Maryland a 3-1 lead. He’d later score down the left alley 3 minutes and 50 seconds into the 3rd quarter giving Maryland that 5-1 lead.
Maltz finished the game with 4 goals and an assist. Jack Koras put up 3 goals and a dish in the win.
Credit Brett Makar for holding Alex Slusher to no goals and just a single assist. This is the second week in a row he’s been able to neutralize an opponent’s best offensive threat. It was apparent early Slusher was going to have problems with Makar and that made things difficult for the Tigers offensively. Sam English was able to muster a goal and a dish and Coulter Mackesy took advantage of some short stick matchups and netted himself a hatrick. But that was about it for Princeton.
Makar finished the game with 4 caused turnovers and 6 groundballs. Ajax Zappitello forced 3 turnovers. Brian Ruppel got the start in cage after Teddy Dolan had a shaky outing against Syracuse and he was pretty damn good stopping 14 of the 19 shots he faced on the day.
Luke Wierman was a pedestrian 13 of 20 from the dot with a turnover. Tyler Sandovol and company did all they could to limit Wierman and all in all only losing 65% of the draws to Wierman sounds like a solid day.
Utah – 8
#16 Hopkins – 12
After losing 2 straight Hopkins badly needed a win against Utah and they were able to pull it out thanks to a solid second half that saw them outscore the Utes 6-3.
Utah was able to keep things interesting early. They took a 3-2 lead with 6:57 remaining in the 1st off of a Ryan Stines goal, dished by Tyler Bradbury. Hopkins would snap back into a 4-3 lead, but Utah kept fighting. Jordan Hyde scored two goals straight getting the Utes back on top 5-4, his second goal of that stretch coming with 11:10 left in the second quarter. A nice over the top pass from MJ McMahon to Hyde on the left wing and he put it 5-hole past Gib Versfeld who started for the injured Tim Marcille.
But Hopkins would take over from there scoring the next 5 goals of the game to take a 9-5 lead. Matt Collison scored a natural hatrick over that run giving Hop a 6-5 lead with 1:46 left in the 2nd quarter off a man up goal, and capping his solo a goal dished by Ryan Evans with 1:04 left in the 3rd. Ryan Evans scored the final goal of that 5 goal run on a feed from Jacob Angelus and the ballgame was pretty much over from there.
Gib actually had a very good outing in cage for the Jays making 15 saves vs 8 goals against. The Hopkins faceoff unit consisting of Tyler Dunn and Logan Callahan have continued to do be “good enough” in Hopkins 3 wins. Hopkins has won all 3 games they’ve kept pace with their opponents and in their 2 losses they each got roached. Callahan has been a bit better than Dunn, but between the two of them Hopkins should be OK at the dot as the season progresses.
Key stat for the Jays, their man up unit went 3 for 4. They were 0 for 7 on the season coming into this game and those 3 extra man goals proved both timely. Hopkins tied things up at 3’s and 5’s off man up goals and took a 6-5 lead off their 3rd man up goal of the game, and that was the lead they’d never relinquish.
Hopkins has been banged up and have had guys come in and out of the lineup after being pretty much healthy over the first two weeks. Both Jacob Angelus (1g, 3a) and Russel Melendez (2a) have been banged up so having guys like Matt Collison (3g) and Ian Krampf (3g, 1a) step up and contribute heavily is a very good sign for Hopkins.
Listen to the audio version…
