In Saturday's men's lacrosse season-finale between the sixth-ranked Harvard Crimson and Dartmouth, the Big Green challenged Harvard throughout the game, but could not find enough firepower to pull out the upset, falling 13-10 to the Crimson.
"They were a very talented team, but we matched up well against them," Scott Hapgood '97 said. "It was a game that could have gone either way, and they ended up making more big plays than we did."
Although Harvard's offense never exploded, it provided just enough ammo to get the job done against the Big Green.
The game was closely contested throughout, with Dartmouth trailing by a goal at the half.
Harvard, however, was able to outscore Dartmouth by a single goal in three out of four periods and hold onto its slight advantage.
Harvard's offense features a wide range of potential goal-scorers. Seven Harvard players' names found their way to the scorers' list over the course of the afternoon.
Jim Bevillacqua (four goals, one assist) and Chris Wojcik (three goals, one assist) perplexed both the Dartmouth defense and the statisticians with their hard-to-stop skills and hard-to-spell names.
The only confusion about Harvard attackman Pat Marvin's name is why he has two first names, but he brushed off the issue and scored one goal for each of them.
However, the force of the Crimson tide seemed like a mere ripple by comparison to the torrential offensive force of Dartmouth's "Blue Wave" duo of John Whelen '98 and Hapgood.
Dartmouth's offense centers around the nation's leading goal-scorer Hapgood who continued his tenacious rampage of goals by burning the Harvard defense for four goals.
"Wheeling" John Whelen followed the advice of pop diva Whitney Houston and saved the best for last, as the sophomore sensation turned in his best performance of the season with four goals of his own.
Tim Kennedy '96 also demonstrated strength, notching three points (one goal, two assists).
However, the strong performance of the goalies in both ends reigned in the two high-powered offenses.
Dartmouth's David Kosloff '97 turned away 17 shots, while Harvard's Rob Lyng stopped 26 shots. Sixteen of Lyng's saves came in the second half.
Although Harvard never could pull away from the upset-hungry Big Green, the Crimson managed to hold on to its lead long enough to win.
This game was the last for 10 Dartmouth seniors: defensemen Ryan Mulrooney, Justin Boyd, Kevin Mahoney and Matt Raben; middies Eric Swanson, Tim Kennedy, John Schneider and Tim Caban; attackman Tom Scott; and goalie Ned Hazard.
This is one of the most talented classes of lacrosse players to play at Dartmouth in the past several seasons.
These players have all played an instrumental part in rejuvenating a program that was dwelling in outskirts of college lacrosse obscurity when they were freshman and is now one of the top teams in the country.
