Men's Lacrosse Breaks Through Against Penn

Sophomore midfielder Murphy Vandervelde raised his arms in the air as his teammates mobbed him, celebrating their first win over a ranked opponent this season. With a playoff berth on the line, the Harvard men’s lacrosse team turned to its newest sharpshooter when the game came down to the final shot. Vandervelde delivered.

Vandervelde’s third goal of the afternoon lifted the Crimson to an 8-7 overtime win over No. 16/14 Penn at Harvard Stadium Saturday. With two games left in the regular season, the win puts Harvard (6-6, 2-2 Ivy) ahead of No. 16/14 Penn (6-4, 2-3), and into a tie for third in the Ivy League standings.

“It feels good to come out on the top of that one,” Vandervelde said. “We’ve had a couple of games where we’ve lost in the fourth quarter, and it feels good to finally put together a 62-and-a-half-minute effort there and finish the fourth quarter.”

A week after conceding five unanswered fourth-quarter goals in a 14-12 loss to No. 2 Cornell, Harvard narrowly avoided another late-game collapse. The Crimson dropped a three-goal lead in the fourth as a strike from Penn junior defender Alex Blonsky capped off a 4-1 Quaker run with 55 seconds left in the fourth to tie the game at seven.

In the final seconds of regulation, Harvard struggled to force overtime as Penn went on the man-up after a Crimson faceoff violation. Three dangerous Quaker shots sailed wide before time expired.

But Harvard controlled the extra frame from beginning to end. Senior midfielder Rick Molé won the opening faceoff for the Crimson, and Harvard drew a 30-second interference penalty less than two minutes later.

On the man-up, Harvard cycled the ball to Vandervelde, who was waiting in a familiar spot, high in the left wing of the box. With two seconds left on the advantage, the sophomore unleashed a long-range game-winner from the 20-yard line.

“We ran a play that we run a lot on man-up,” Crimson coach Chris Wojcik ’96 said. “We knew they were going to be packed in and that we would have opportunities to shoot the ball from the outside.”

Less than two weeks after capturing The Crimson’s Athlete of the Week honors, Vandervelde continued to roll. After scoring his first collegiate goal in a 9-6 win over Dartmouth Mar. 23, the midfielder has scored 12 goals in his last five games.

“It’s just my teammates getting me looks,” Vandervelde said of his recent scoring outburst. “I just have a lot of space, and it’s kind of just closing my eyes and shooting the ball and hoping the goalie doesn’t get it.”

Despite being out-performed on the stat sheet, the defense held strong and kept Harvard in the game. Senior goaltender Harry Krieger finished with a game-high 12 saves.

“When it counted, our defense really stepped up, shut them down, and gave the offense a chance to finish the game out,” Vandervelde said.

Crimson junior attackman Carl Zimmerman provided the game’s first goal less than a minute and a half into the first. Penn responded with three straight strikes to jump out to its largest lead of the game, 3-1.

But a late first-quarter goal from senior attackman Alex White sparked a 5-0 Crimson run that carried through the second and third quarters. White found the back of the net from the top of the box to record his team-leading 19th goal of the season.

Vandervelde scored his first goal of the game high on the right wing to even things up, 3-3, 46 seconds into the second. Three minutes later, Zimmerman danced around the crease and beat Penn junior goalkeeper Brian Feeney for the go-ahead goal. Murphy added his second goal of the game at the 8:32 mark of the second quarter on the man-up.

“I thought we started out really crisp on offense; [we were] really shooting the ball well,” Wojcik said.

A defensive chess match characterized the rest of the second quarter and most of the third, as 23 minutes and 18 seconds passed without a goal on either side.

Two Penn shots rang off the Harvard pipes in the second, but the Crimson managed to hold the Quakers scoreless. Harvard junior Jack Walker broke the scoring drought with 14 seconds left in the quarter off a feed from White.

Penn controlled the final frame of regulation, outshooting the Crimson, 17-2. After Penn scored three goals in less than six minutes to tie the game at six with just over four minutes remaining in regulation, the Crimson responded as Dwyer found Ian Ardrey in front of the goal for a 7-6 edge with just over two minutes left.

Harvard appeared to have the game locked up with a minute to play after defender Robert Duvnjak forced a Penn turnover. But Quaker freshman Matt Leonhard prevented the Crimson from completing the clear, knocking the ball out of the stick of junior midfielder Brian O’Toole to give Penn possesion. Seconds later, Blonsky evened the score at seven.

“In the fourth quarter, we were very sloppy,” Wojcik said. “For us though, to win and get over the hump—to finish a close game out—is a big step forward for this team.”

The Crimson now controls its destiny as it heads into its final two games of the regular season versus No. 10/9 Princeton and No. 17/15 Yale. Two wins would guarantee Harvard a top-four conference finish and an Ivy League tournament berth.

“That was like a playoff game for us,” Vandervelde said. “We’ve got two more games, and it’s win out or die. The playoffs have started, and we still have life.”

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