No. 1 Cornell Coasts to Easy Win

The possibilities were endless.

Despite starting the season 0-4, the Harvard men’s lacrosse team was on a high from a two-game win streak going into Schoellkopf Field Saturday afternoon in Ithaca, N.Y. A victory against No. 1 Cornell would likely have vaulted the Crimson into the national rankings and renewed its status as a nationally competitive team.

But the Crimson (2-5, 1-1 Ivy) was no match for Cornell (8-0, 3-0), as the Big Red dominated the game to post a 15-6 victory.

It was the killer second and third quarters from Cornell that dashed all hopes for a Harvard victory.

The first frame saw a fairly even matchup, with the Crimson winning the opening faceoff and scoring just over a minute in on an unassisted goal from senior Carle Stenmark. The two squads exchanged scores until the Big Red took the lead for good with two minutes left in the period at 3-2.

“Guys were really excited,” co-captain John Henry Flood said. “Guys played really physical and hard. The mistakes we made were from almost being too amped up: sprinting too hard and running past the player, shooting from too far away.”

Once Harvard fell behind, it was downhill from there. Cornell notched 10 goals to Harvard’s two—one from co-captain Brian Mahler, another from senior Greg Cohen—over the middle two frames, taking complete control of the game to lead 9-3 at halftime and 13-4 after three.

“At the beginning of the game...we were taking smart shots and scoring,” Flood said. “Once they got ahead of us we panicked and started taking shots from fifteen yards against the best goalie in the country, which does not work.”

The miscues added insult to injury.

The Crimson allowed the final goal of the third in bizarre fashion. After sophomore goalie Joe Pike made a nice save, the ball was turned over and ended up going off a Big Red player’s head and into the back of the net.

The turnovers were fatal, as the squad posted 30 to Cornell’s 19. The defensive core was unable to clear the ball, managing just 10 successes in 18 chances over the middle periods and 15 of 29 overall.

“We couldn’t clear the ball effectively,” Flood said. ”We’d make a good play on defense, but then we couldn’t get it out.”

In the fourth, Harvard played more solidly, managing to keep up with the Big Red as each team posted a two-goal frame. Stenmark found the net for his second goal of the game just over three minutes in to make it 13-5, but the Big Red answered by rattling off two consecutive scores, including the only man-up goal of the game to stretch its lead to 10.

Mahler tallied the final score of the game to end the day with three total points.

“Today, [Mahler and Stenmark] were the two most important players offensively on the field,” Crimson coach Scott Anderson said. “It’s nice, especially when you’re playing an aggressive, physical team, to have seniors like Brian and Carle who have poise and competitive experience that really comes out.”

The statistics only tell a part of the story. Although Harvard’s goal and shot totals have gone down considerably over the last three games, this may in fact be a blessing in disguise. The shot differential Saturday was 52-26 and the squad has managed just 19 goals over its last three outings compared with 33 in its first four. Yet, Harvard has gone 2-1 after starting 0-4.

According to both Flood and Anderson, a new offensive outlook is at the helm of this transition.

“We talked about being more judicious about what are good shots—shooting to score, not just getting the ball on net, working the ball more, looking for good opportunities,” Anderson said. “And that does lead to low-scoring games...but you only have to score one more goal than the other team to win.”

—Staff writer Madeleine I. Shapiro can be reached at mshapiro@fas.harvard.edu.