Lehigh’s men’s lacrosse remains undefeated after a 14-11 victory against rival Lafayette on Sunday, April, 18. Lehigh is currently ranked sixth in the nation by Inside Lacrosse.
Junior faceoff specialist Mike Sisselberger continued his remarkable season and set a new Patriot League ground ball record of 21, defeating his own previous record of 20 from last Friday’s game also against Lafayette.
When asked about the team’s performance, head coach Kevin Cassese felt that Sisselberger’s work played an important role in Sunday’s win.
“The face-off game was really strong for us,” Cassese said. “I think the work that Mike Sisselberger did was really impressive. Frankly, we needed it.”
Lehigh’s Christian Mule and Andrew Eichelberger were the top scorers in the game, each of them contributing three goals. The two helped Lehigh build a six-goal lead midway through the second quarter.
The first quarter of the game was action-packed, with four minutes left on the clock Matt Marker completed an alley-oop goal from Crew Cintron with a slam-dunk finish catching the Lafayette goalie facing the wrong direction.
By the end of the first quarter, Lehigh had outscored Lafayette 5-1, with each goal coming from a different player on the Mountain Hawks.
The second quarter opened with a highlight goal from Mule. Through a mess of Lafayette defenders, Mule made a sneaky behind-the-back goal in the bottom right corner.
Lehigh’s sloppy play showed up throughout the rest of the second quarter, committing three interferences that allowed Lafayette to fight back in the game.
Lehigh regained momentum after back-to-back goals, just 44 seconds apart by Mule and Quinn Armstrong.
Lafayette, however, felt a strong energy boost after two Lehigh penalties led to three straight goals, two coming from Lafayette attackman Peter Lehman.
With 9:21 remaining in the fourth quarter the Leopards had cut the Lehigh lead down to one goal.
With 8:21 remaining though, Crew Clinton halted the Lafayette momentum when he scored a goal to bring Lehigh’s lead back to two goals.
With just two minutes left on the clock, Lafayette committed a defensive penalty that left them with a man down. Then, after they pulled their goalie in a hail-mary effort, Lehigh capitalized with an easy goal to take a 14-11 lead.
Although Lehigh won, the rivalry matchup was much closer than anticipated.
“I felt like there were points where we could’ve blown the game wide open, and our lack of attention to detail in our shooting didn’t allow us to do that,” Cassese said.
On Saturday, April 24 at 12pm, the Mountain Hawks look to continue their undefeated season when they play at Ulrich Sports Complex against Bucknell.
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