Victory Stretches Streak to Four

Harvard men’s lacrosse extended its winning streak to four games by punishing No. 20 Fairfield with a 12-3 blowout. Sophomore midfielders Jason Duboe and Travis Burr led the charge.

With four goals on the Saturday, Duboe has now scored three or more goals in the past three games.

“I missed a bunch of shots in the first quarter,” Duboe said. “Luckily one fell and sort of started something. Mostly it’s easy to score when your defense doesn’t let up more than six points a game. If they keep that up they’ll be making it real easy on us to play without pressure.”

The Crimson offense went on a 10-0 tear starting two minutes into the second period. In that frame junior midfielder Nick Smith won all six faceoffs. Over the course of the game he took 11-of-15, before freshman midfielder Andy Parchman went to the X and took 2-of-3.

“When you win faceoffs it allows you a kind of luxury,” Harvard coach John Tillman said. “If you don’t have the ball much and you make a mistake and the other team is winning faceoffs it really hurts you.”

Junior midfielder Max Motschwiller kicked off Harvard’s scoring onslaught with a goal with 9:22 remaining in the first. Though Fairfield retaliated under a minute later, Burr’s first of the game gave Harvard a 2-1 advantage at the end of the period. The sophomore struck twice more in the second period, and with contributions from Duboe and freshman attacker Dean Gibbons, the Crimson sat on a 6-2 lead at halftime.

With two quick goals, one just 46 seconds into the second half, Duboe set the tone for the remainder of the game.

“I was just set up today by [senior midfielder] Zach Widbin and Max Motschwiller,” Duboe said of his hat-trick streak. “Usually Max and I get on each other before the games and he really picked me up today and when he’s down I pick him up.”

Junior goalie Joe Pike and the Harvard defense held Fairfield to its halftime score until the Stags found the back of the net behind senior goalie Evan O’Donnell with 1:39 left in the game.

Harvard dominated the shot total, outshooting Fairfield 40-16 in the lopsided contest—20-9 in the first half—forcing Fairfield goalie Joe Marra to make 15 saves.

“We felt like we were outshooting them by a decent amount for a while, but the score was close,” Tillman said. “So we said ‘hey, keep taking good shots, just keep doing the things we’re doing, and we just need to shoot a little smarter, a little better, and hopefully it’ll fall’ and that’s what they did.”

In a somewhat physical game, the Crimson killed both extra-man opportunities for the Stags and went 1-for-3 in its own man-up situations.

“I thought a year ago maybe we weren’t as physical as we wanted to be,” Tillman said. “So we really emphasized that this week—winning the middle third of the field, picking up ground balls, controlling the flow of the game.”

The team seemed unaffected by the particularly cold, windy, and wet conditions.

“We’re pretty used to it. he UMass game was a lot colder than this, just in terms of the unrelenting rain for the whole game,” Duboe said of the sub-freezing temperature. “It’s warm for us right now.”

Ultimately, Tillman attributed the team’s success to solid preparation by the coaching staff—his assistant coaches, Anthony Kelly and Kevin Warne—combined with the young team’s energetic style of play.

“The kids played hard. They really came out with a sense of urgency,” he said.

Looking ahead, the Crimson will open its Ivy season against Penn on the road before continuing the spring-break swing through North Carolina to face Duke and out to Denver, Colo. for some non-conference action, before returning home to match up against Ivy rival Cornell.

“We’re young, but I think we’re a pretty mature and disciplined team for how young we are,” Duboe said. “We do have a long way to go. We’re far from perfect and we really have to bear down and take it one game at a time. Our age down the line hopefully won’t affect us in some bigger games and we’ll hopefully keep carrying this attitude that we have into games against Cornell and Princeton.”

—Staff writer Elizabeth A. Joyce can be reached at eajoyce@fas.harvard.edu.