The Dartmouth men's lacrosse team saw nothing but red this past Saturday as Cornell torched the Big Green, 17-8. The loss brings Dartmouth's record to 3-4 overall and to 0-2 in the Ivy League. It also marks their fourth consecutive loss after a 3-0 start on the season.
Cornell pounced on Dartmouth early in the game, leading 6-1 after the first quarter. It was the second slow start in a row for Dartmouth as Penn scored seven unanswered goals in the beginning of last week's game.
"The last couple of games teams have just jumped out on us," said Adam Solow '01, who had two goals and an assist on the day.
"I don't know why, but our offense hasn't been too prolific in the first quarter," co-Captain John Wheelen '98 said. "It seems by the time we finally score, we are already down 3-0 at least. We just need to be more aggressive and not be so focused on playing defense early on."
"We get put in a hole and it's tough to climb out," Solow said. "During warm-ups we're fired up but when the whistle blows something happens to us -- we're put back on our heals."
Jeremy Desor '00 also scored twice for Dartmouth and added an assist. Brandon Henry '99, Chris O'Hara '01, John Silkey '00 and George Wisecarver '99 each scored once.
Cornell outshot Dartmouth 40 to 31 and put over 50 percent of their shots on goal. Josh Morgan and Matt Wise of Cornell each had a hat trick while Morgan added two assists for his highest point total of the season.
"We've been playing some solid defense, but once we get that initial stop, we've been having trouble clearing the ball," Wheelen said. "The other team gets the ball back and we're playing defense again. I think in the beginning of the year we were getting more fast break opportunities," he added.
Dartmouth also had a tough time on offense. Cornell goalie Rich Yost saved 65 percent of Dartmouth shots on goal to continue his impressive league play. He is the second-leading goaltender in the league. The Big Green didn't present much of a challenge however, with no scorers in the top 10 of the league.
"Their goalie made a lot of saves, but some of our shots weren't that good," Solow said.
The Big Green need three wins out of their last five games in order to improve upon last year's record of 5-7, but the road will be rocky with tough teams like Brown, Harvard and Princeton lurking in the home stretch.
"Two-thirds of our players are freshmen and sophomores, so we haven't found our rhythm or identity yet we are just running around out there," Solow said. "That can be deadly when you play in the Ivy League, which is the best league in the country."
"We need to get a win against Yale [tomorrow] who is winless in Ivy play," Wheelen said. "That would bring us back to .500 and give us some confidence going into Brown."
