The Dartmouth men's lacrosse team squandered an early lead to lose the last game of its season to Harvard 8-5 at home on Saturday. The Big Green finished its season 4-11, 1-5 Ivy.
Co-captain Brian Koch '09 led the Big Green with two goals and an assist on the game. Josh Gillam '10 added two goals, and Ari Sussman '10 had two assists. Pat Marshall '09 made eight saves in goal. Freshman Jeff Cohen led the Crimson with a game-high three goals.
Dartmouth opened the scoring three minutes into the game with a goal from Gillam. Sussman doubled the Big Green lead four minutes later, catching a pass from co-captain Tim Daniels '08. Dartmouth looked to finish the period with the two-goal advantage, but goals from Harvard senior Max Motschwiller and Cohen within the last two minutes leveled the score entering the second quarter.
"Obviously we would have liked to have gone in the next quarter with a two-goal lead," Andy Gagel '10 said. "We were pretty confident, though, that we were playing well and could keep scoring goals and regain the lead."
The Big Green regained its lead 1:36 into the second quarter with another goal from Gillam. Koch increased the lead to 4-2 with his first of the game. The Crimson was poised to repeat its first quarter rally as Cohen scored his second goal of the game to make the score 4-3. Dartmouth, however, was able to defend and carry its slim lead to the halftime break.
"We were happy to have that lead going into the half," Gagel said. "We felt like we could have stopped a few of their goals and scored a few more ourselves. Overall, though, we were happy with our play."
Harvard came out the second half scoring two goals in the first five minutes to take a 5-4 lead. The Big Green looked to tighten up defensively and grab an equalizer, but a man-advantage goal for the Crimson two minutes later further increased the deficit. Harvard added one more in the closing minutes of the period to take a 7-4 lead into the final quarter.
"Turnovers was definitely the problem," Kip Dooley '12 said. "The defense still continued to play well throughout the period, but we didn't control possession enough. We had some tough calls but that's part of the game, we just needed to see more possession."
Neither team scored for nearly ten minutes to open the fourth quarter. The Big Green finally found the net with 6:47 remaining in the game to make the score 7-5. Any hopes of a comeback, however, were quickly extinguished as the Crimson restored its three-goal advantage less than two minutes later. Neither team scored for the remaining five minutes, though Dartmouth came agonizingly close on a number of occasions.
"We definitely thought that we could have gone on and won the game, especially after scoring and winning the face-off," Gagel said. "It's unfortunate, but that's the way it ended up."
Harvard won 11 of the game's 17 face-offs as Dartmouth continued to struggle on the draw. The Big Green also was not able to capitalize on man-advantage situations, scoring only once out of four opportunities. The Crimson held a slight edge in shots, 27-26.
"In some games we have tough matchups," Dooley said. "Kyle Lagratta ['09] had such a great game against Virginia, and is one of the better face-off men in the country. The Harvard guy just knew how to beat him."
Saturday also marked Senior Day at Scully-Fahey Field, as the Big Green honored its 2009 class. Daniels, Koch, Lagratta, Jonathan Livadas '09, Doug Rendall '09, Martin Bernstein '09, Philip Killian '09, Pat Marshall '09, John Mattimore '09, Tim McVeigh '09, Jimmy Mullen '09 and Ted Newhouse '09 are all graduating seniors.
