Lehigh men’s lacrosse blasts NJIT 21-4 in season opener

There was no question that the Lehigh men’s lacrosse team accomplished its team motto of “win the day” on Saturday.

In its season opener, it tied the most goals in a game since 2010 in a 21-4 victory over New Jersey Institute of Technology at home at Banko Field.

The 17-point win was the largest since Kevin Cassese took over as Lehigh’s head coach in 2008. It was also just the third time the team has scored 20 or more goals in a game since that year.

With the Canadian stars of Dan Taylor and Patrick Corbett gone, the Mountain Hawks (1-0) looked to a new player from Canada in freshman attackman Tristan Rai, who racked up a game-high five goals on just five shots despite not even playing in the second half.

“I wanted to keep it simple at first, it was my first ever game on Frank Banko Field,” Rai said. “So I was just trying to do the little things, all the right things, and make plays that other people won’t make.”

Rai actually missed half of the fall because was playing for Team Australia in the FIL World Indoor Championships, but Cassese said that this performance was exactly what he was expecting.

“He’s a guy that has climbed up the ranks,” Cassese said. “He came in as an unknown recruit…but he played exceptionally well in our scrimmages in the fall. He came back in the spring and hasn’t missed a beat.”

Rai was far from the only member of the team’s offensive fireworks. Junior attackman Matt Raposo had three goals and two assists and senior attackman Reid Weber had two goals and two assists

Senior midfielder Alex Eaton added four goals and two assists. The four goals was a career high for Eaton.

“We didn’t really know what to expect from them because we didn’t have a lot of film on them coming in, but they fought real hard, they fought till the end,” Eaton said. “It’s good to get a win right off the bat.”

NJIT (0-1), which went 0-12 in its first season as a Division I program in 2015, remains winless in program history.

Lehigh didn’t take long to put the game away, jumping out to a quick 6-0 lead in the first nine minutes of play. NJIT made it 8-2 by the end of the first quarter, but the Hawks strung together another eight straight goals in the second quarter to make it 16-2 at halftime.

The large margin allowed Lehigh to empty its bench and give some newer guys playing time. A group of freshmen in midfielder/attackman Lucas Spence, attackman/midfielder Mickey Fitzpatrick, midfielder Jackson Monnin and attackman Andrew Pettit all had their first career goals in the brown and white. Sophomore attackman John Mehok added his first two goals of his Lehigh career as well.

Up next Lehigh will face a much tougher team in Duke University, which was ranked No. 3 in the Inside Lacrosse preseason poll. Despite the Blue Devils being Cassese’s alma mater, he played off the importance of the connection.

“At the end of the day, it’s just the next game on the schedule and we have to treat it as such,” he said. “I don’t think our guys care where I went to school, I think they care about how I coach them, and I’m going to focus on that this week.”

Lehigh will face Duke on Feb. 14 at 1 p.m. in Durham, North Carolina.