Cheek's Overtime Goal Carries Men's Lacrosse Past Villanova on Opening Day

Saturday’s season-opening showdown in men’s lacrosse between No. 17/18 Harvard and No. RV/20 Villanova provided both teams with the chance to prove their spots in the rankings and secure a statement nonconference win. The two squads knew what was at stake and played accordingly, but as time winded down in regulation, nothing could separate them, and the match headed to sudden-death overtime, tied 12-12.

After dominating at the faceoff X throughout regulation, the Wildcats once again won possession when their sophomore faceoff specialist Luke Palmadesso picked up his 11th ground ball of the day. Villanova looked poised to score the game-winning goal, as it held not only possession of the ball but also the momentum.

Moments earlier, the Wildcats had reeled off three goals in 20 seconds to erase a 12-9 deficit with a little more than four minutes remaining. With Crimson sophomore goalie Robert Shaw making the first start of his collegiate career, Villanova was piling on the pressure and had Shaw and his defensemen on their heels.

Just as it had all game, Harvard’s defense bent but did not break. It forced a quick turnover in overtime, handing the ball back to the offense. Wildcats junior goalie Dan Willis prolonged the game with two saves, but Crimson sophomore attackman Morgan Cheek finally broke through with the tiebreaking score, his third of the game. Using his strength to turn the corner and gain a strong position just to the left of the goal, he fired a powerful shot past Willis and into the net.

The brilliant solo effort earned the win for Harvard (1-0) in a game that featured four lead changes and could have gone either way. Villanova (0-1), meanwhile, left Jordan Field still seeking its first win of the season.

The loss certainly came as a letdown for the Wildcats, who held a 6-2 lead at one point in the second quarter and had multiple chances to jump ahead at the end of the game. Each time, however, the Crimson made the necessary adjustments on defense to keep Villanova at bay.

“Initially defensively, we didn’t come out as aggressive as we hoped,” Harvard coach Chris Wojcik ’96 said. “We were a step too slow in our help defense and allowed them to get too comfortable moving the ball. The biggest adjustment we made was [starting to] go at them and being more aggressive.”

With the added defensive pressure, the Crimson held the Wildcats to just two goals between the 13:23 mark of the second quarter and the start of the fourth quarter. In the process, the 6-2 deficit turned into an 8-8 tie.

“We’ve emphasized all week that we need to focus on ourselves and not worry about what the other team’s doing,” sophomore attackman Joe Lang said. “We trusted our ability to stop them, and we knew we’d get our shots.”

Lang scored one of his three goals during the furious comeback, but the sophomore made his biggest contributions in the fourth quarter when the game was tied, 9-9. Within one minute, he fired two long distance shots into the net, both from almost the exact same spot.

“We got a few mismatches and decided to space out the field to make it harder for them to play help defense,” Lang said. “And when it worked once, we went back to it again.”

Senior midfielder Ian Ardrey, Harvard’s second leading scorer in 2015, added a goal of his own after Lang’s two to push the lead to 12-9. With just five minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Crimson looked to be on its way to victory.

The team’s failure to control the faceoff X finally came back to bite it, however, as Villanova won four straight faceoffs that led to three quick goals. The Wildcats then had a chance to win the game in the final minute but were finally stopped by the Harvard defense.

“It all came down to composure in the end,” Wojcik said. “We have guys back there with a lot of experience who have been in those situations before, and that helped us hold down the tie in both regulation and overtime, until we could get the game-winner.”

—Staff writer George Hu can be reached at george.hu@thecrimson.com.