March 19, 2011

Final Stats

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. - The Marist men's lacrosse team kicked off the MAAC portion of their schedule with a home date with Siena on Saturday. In a closely contested game, in which Marist twice held three goal leads, Siena's strong fourth quarter ended up spelling defeat for the Red Foxes. After 60 minutes of action, the Saints were victorious by a score of 12-10. Marist was led on offense by sophomore Jim Marks (Camillus, N.Y.), who notched his first collegiate hat trick. Sophomore Connor Rice (Penfield, N.Y.) also played a pivotal role on offense as he picked up four points on two goals and two assists.

The scoring began with Siena getting on the board first with a Danny Martinsen goal at the 9:04 mark of the first quarter. Three plus minutes later Marist cracked the goal column as sophomore Jack Doherty (Yorktown Heights, N.Y.) found the back of the net off a Kenny Tomeno (Webster, N.Y.) assist. This marked the freshman's first collegiate point. Two consecutive goals by Marks at 3:11 and 0:09 closed out the scoring in the first quarter.

Coming out in the second quarter, the Red Foxes kept their positive momentum going as senior Corey Zindel (Randolph, N.J.) scored 9 seconds in at 14:51 to stretch the lead to 4-1. The Saints responded quickly as Martinsen scored the first of three consecutive goals for Siena. After Chris Roth tallied his second straight goal to tie the game at 4-4, it was Marist's turn to go on a goal run. Zindel and Doherty closed the half with each netting their second goals of the game. The game went to halftime with the score Marist 6 - Siena 4.

In the second half, Rice got into the scoring act as he scored his first goal at the 13:45 mark of the third to push Marist's advantage up to three again at 7-4. Roth and Martinsen capped their hat tricks with the first two goals of Siena's three-zero run from 11:55 to 9:15. The third goal was scored by Bryan Neufeld, a dangerous attacker with the nation's longest consecutive point per game streak, who had been previously held off the scoreboard by tight marking from Marist's defensive backfield. Marks' third goal of the game with 2:43 remaining in the quarter helped Marist take a 8-7 lead into the final 15 minutes.

The fourth quarter saw the Saints' go on a three goal streak within the first 4:42 of play. Faced with a 10-8 deficit Marist never backed down as grad student Bob von Hoffmann (Montclair, N.J.) quickly answered with his first goal of the game at 9:26 to bring the Red Foxes' within one. Siena attained their largest lead of the game late as Neufeld connected for his third of the game at 6:05 and Roth his fifth at 3:01 to go ahead 12-9. A late goal by Rice at 1:14 brought the score to 12-10, but time ran out on the Red Foxes as the game ended with the same score.

For the game, Marks lead a group of four Red Foxes with multi-goal games. Following Marks' three were Rice, Doherty and Zindel with two goals a piece.

Zindel and Rice's consecutive game scoring streaks now reach 24 and 20 games respectively.

Defensively, senior Nick Armstrong (Kings Park, N.Y.), junior Zach Badalucco (Brewster, N.Y.) and freshman Edward Coombs (Horsham, Pa.) each caused two turnovers, with Armstrong collecting the third most ground balls with four. Sophomore midfielder Matt Dugan (Cortland, N.Y.) led the team with six ground balls, mostly courtesy of his success in the face-off circle, 14 of 25 wins.

As a team, Marist outshot Siena 38-25, collected more ground balls at 36-26, won more faceoffs at 14-12 and caused more turnovers at 17-13.

The Red Foxes will be in action on Tuesday as they travel to Albany to take on the Great Danes on, March 22. The game is set to begin at 7 p.m.