by BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Senior goalie Ryan LaPlante (Fort Collins, Colo.) made 14 saves to lead the [5/6] University of Denver men’s lacrosse team to a 10-4 victory over Lehigh on Tuesday night at the Ulrich Sports Complex. With his 14 saves, LaPlante passed 2014 grad Jamie Faus for second on DU’s DI saves list (424).
“We’re really proud of that defensive effort tonight,” head coach Bill Tierney said. “We felt that in that Ohio State game we played terribly defensively, but we responded with a great performance on that end of the field tonight. I thought we had a great game plan today, getting the guys tighter, and I thought they did a good job. It was really good to see Ryan bounce back and have a good game tonight in not great conditions. It got really cold for long stretches with the wind, but I thought our guys got past that and fought really hard today.”
Tewaaraton Watch List members Connor Cannizzaro (Cazenovia, N.Y.) and Wesley Berg (Coquitlam, B.C.), sophomore Tyler Pace (Coquitlam, B.C.), senior Erik Adamson (Anaheim Hills, Calif.) and sophomore Zach Miller(Seneca Tribe, N.Y.) all had two goals apiece to account for Denver’s 10 goals. Miller and Pace also added a pair of assists each to lead Denver with four points on the evening.
Lehigh jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first quarter on goals from three different scorers in the opening 15 minutes. The Pioneers were outshot 9-6 in the first quarter, and hit two pipes in the opening frame.
The Pioneers went on a 5-0 run in the second quarter toflip the script and give Denver a 5-3 lead heading into the locker room.
“It was an interesting night,” Tierney said. “We didn’t score any goals at the near end during this game. We went 0-5-0-5, which is really strange. I want to give credit to their goalie, which was their backup goalie. That young man made some saves on us early which I think got us thinking too much, and you can’t think when you shoot, you’ve got to just shoot it hard and put it where you put it.”
Connor Cannizzaro got Denver on the board on a man-up with 12:26 to play in the second quarter, breaking a 32:27 scoreless drought spanning back to the start of the fourth quarter on Saturday at Ohio State.
Adamson cut the lead to 3-2 on the next possession on a rebound effort off a Cannizzaro shot. Miller continued the run, tying it up at 3-3 with 8:42 to play in the second quarter with the Pioneers second of four man-up goals of the night off a beautiful cross-zone feed from Pace. From an assist to scoring on his own, Pace broke down the Mountain Hawks defense on the next Pioneer possession, spinning his defender twice before slotting his shot into the bottom left corner. Adamson then scored his second of the quarter with 2:57 to play to make it 5-3 off the feed from Berg.
Freshman FOGO Trevor Baptiste (Denville, N.J.) was 6-for-9 from the X in the first half, winning three faceoffs in each quarter.
Neither team found the back of the net in the third quarter. Lehigh held a 10-4 shot lead in the stanza, but the Pioneers’ defense hounded the Mountain Hawks for the two middle quarters.
Denver held Lehigh without a goal for 40:13 between the first and fourth quarters, until Reid Weber broke the scoreless drought with a rebound goal off an initial LaPlante save. Berg came up with his second of the day to pad the lead back to two with 4:44 remaining in regulation, running around the back of the net, and putting it in-between the goalies legs from just outside the crease. Miller made it 7-4 with 3:54 to play in regulation on a duplicate of the Pioneers second-quarter man-up goal.
Pace and Cannizzaro scored two-straight inside 63 seconds of eachother to stretch the lead to 9-4 with 2:02 to play before Berg found the back of the net for the second time on the day with 1:21 to play in the final stanza with a 6-on-4 man-up goal after a pair of Lehigh penalties during the Cannizzaro score.
“Christian Burgdorf held the [Dan] Taylor kid to one assist all night,” Tierney said. “That’s a hell of an effort because that’s a great lacrosse player. After those first few minutes where they got the three, we probably haven’t seen that good of a defensive effort in a long time.”
Denver held a 37-21 edge in ground balls on the night, including a 24-6 gritty effort in the second half. Baptiste won 6-of-7 faceoffs in the final quarter to finish 12-for-17 on the night.
The Pioneers wrap-up their three-game road swing on Saturday against Penn State on Saturday in Hempstead, N.Y. as part of a twin bill at Hofstra. DU’s next home game will take place on March 28, when the Pioneers open BIG EAST play against Georgetown (1 p.m. MT/Altitude).
