NOTEBOOK: Men's Lacrosse Comes Up Just Short Against Duke

Devin Dwyer set up camp behind the Duke net. As the clock ticked toward zero, somebody had to be open—a pushing penalty had put the Harvard men’s lacrosse team on the man up with eight seconds left in regulation. The Crimson freshman saw an opening at the top of the crease and launched a pass above the crossbar.

But the ball would never reach its intended destination. The rubber found the large pocket of Blue Devils goaltender Kyle Turri, who cleared the ball down the field as time expired.

“I think looking back, we would run the same thing,” Harvard coach Chris Wojcik ’96 said. “I think what we wanted was there.”

The Crimson (4-5, 1-1 Ivy) entered Saturday night’s contest looking to upset the No. 10/12 team in the nation for the first time in four seasons. With a controlled attack and a few key stops, Harvard came oh-so-close to its first signature win of the season in front of 4,110 fans at Harvard stadium.

“I think that for a majority of the game we did fight and we did do what we wanted to do,” captain Jason Gonos said. “We just got to put that complete game together to be where we want to be.”

The Crimson managed to control the pace early against the seventh-ranked NCAA Division I offense. Although Duke capitalized on rebounds in the second half, Ivy League Player of the Week Harry Krieger was a solid presence between the pipes for Harvard with nine saves. Late in the second quarter, the senior stifled a Blue Devil odd-man rush with a left leg-save on his weak side.

Defender Joe Petrucci faced the daunting task of covering Duke’s leading attackman Jordan Wolf, who finished the night with three goals. But the Crimson junior nevertheless backstopped Harvard effectively, consistently beating Wolf to the touchline and forcing turnovers.

“Joe Petrucci is an amazing athlete,” said Gonos, a fellow defenseman. “He definitely showed his athleticism and his pride and his heart today by running those balls down.”

CLOSING IT OUT

In a game that saw four lead changes and 10 unique ties, neither team held more than a one-goal lead until the fourth quarter. As the Crimson and the Blue Devils struggled to string together any sort of run, Harvard appeared to gain a solid upper hand with the game’s first two-goal lead of the game at the 7:22 mark of the final frame.

Yet in the next minute and a half, Duke would vaporize the Crimson advantage. Blue Devils attackman and leading scorer Jordan Wolf opened up a 4-0 run with 6:25 left on the clock. Sophomore midfielder Will Haus won the very next faceoff for Duke before sprinting through a gap in the Harvard defense for an unassisted and uncontested score 12 seconds later.

“They made a really great play,” Gonos said of Haus’s goal. “We were a little slow to go to the guy running down the field. In retrospect, maybe we could have met him a little bit sooner and got our hands on him so he couldn’t get as good of a shot as he did.”

The Blue Devils rode the one-two punch for two more strikes before holding on for the win. In many ways, the run was reminiscent of Brown’s four unanswered fourth-quarter goals in its 11-9 come-from-behind win over the Crimson two weeks earlier.

“Our thoughts are, ‘Hey, we were a play away from winning this game, and we’d be happy,’” Wojcik said. “We’re going to come back together on Monday, talk about what we did well, which was a lot, and then talk about and work on how we can close out that game better and make progress from there.”

VANDERVELDE

After recording his first career hat trick in his team’s 16-7 loss to Albany on Tuesday, Murphy Vandervelde approached Saturday night’s matchup with an edge.

“Looking forward, we’ve got Duke on Saturday, and we’re going to really stick it to them,” Vandervelde said Tuesday. “This was a wakeup call.”

On Saturday, the sophomore midfielder backed up those words with yet another three-goal performance.

Vandervelde struck thrice on the man-up with machine-like efficiency. Each power-play goal followed a similar pattern: Harvard cycled the ball around the Duke defense before kicking it out to the wing for Vandervelde, who delivered three accurate rips from long range.

The sophomore’s first goal came with 2:25 left in the third quarter to tie things at seven.

His second and third goals provided the Crimson’s last two leads of the game early in the fourth. Harvard finished the night 3-for-4 on the man-up.

“He’s got a very good form, and he’s got a very heavy shot,” Wojcik said of Vandervelde. “We did a really good job setting his shot up on the extra man. Pete Schwartz and Devin Dwyer did a really good job getting the ball.”

Before the Crimson’s 9-6 win at Dartmouth on March 23, Vandervelde had zero career collegiate goals to his name. Three games later, the sophomore midfielder has seven. As Harvard prepares to host No. 3 Cornell next Saturday, Wojcik will have a new offensive weapon at his disposal.

“I was really happy to see how well and confident Murphy was shooting the ball,” Wojcik said. “When he gets his hands free, he can really bring it.”

—Staff writer Michael D. Ledecky can be reached at mledecky@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @mdledecky.