Cortland Standard .net

By ALAN BUTLER
Sports Editor
Facing their seventh nationally-ranked opponent of the season, the SUNY Cortland men’s lacrosse team is certainly battle tested.
And all those previous challenges are paying off, at least in the thinking of head coach Steve Beville after his Red Dragons came up 13-11 winners over visiting Nazareth College for their seventh consecutive victory.
“We’ve been in a lot of tough, hard games against good teams, so I think that goes a long ways towards the end of the season here as we get into the playoff run,” said Beville, who got four-goal outings from attackman Zach Hopps and midfielder Matt Rakoczy. “Our guys never panicked and we knew we could physically impose our will on them on both sides of the ball.”
After giving up an early extra-man goal, 12th ranked Cortland (9-4) never trailed and led by three goals on four different occasions as 14th ranked Nazareth (10-4) was in comeback mode throughout this Wednesday afternoon non-conference outing at the Stadium Complex.
When Nazareth pulled even twice at 3-3 and 6-6 in the first half, Cortland responded on each occasion by scoring three unanswered goals.
“But Nazareth found a way. They got a couple of man-up goals and a couple on subbing and one on a pick play they drew up coming of the sideline,” noted Beville, Cortland not comfortable until goalie Scott Tota dug out an errant Nazareth pass out of the backside of the mesh leading to the Red Dragons chewing up the final seconds. “They just do a lot of little things that give them opportunities and they have really good shooters. So give them credit for hanging in there with us. Our guys did a great job responding to their runs, and again I’m sure that’s just from playing a lot of tough, hard games early in the season.”
Remember, Cortland was 2-4 at one juncture before this recent stretch of success including beating a Nazareth team currently sitting atop the Empire 8 Conference standings.
“They came back and fired back every time we scored, but we kept our poise and limited turnovers today and I think that was big for us,” said junior Hopps, who now has a team-high 25 goals this season. “We just came out and played well and put the ball in the net.”
Midfielder Mike Cantelli added two goals and two assists to the Cortland offense, with middie Billy Davis, frosh attackman Devin Phelps and extra-man sniper Andrew Gonzalez also finding the net in the victory.
“WE JUST MADE A lot of mental mistakes,” said Nazareth coach Rob Randall, who got three goals and five assists from junior attackman Luke Wooters in a losing effort including the game’s final tally in the final minute.
“I know we talked to the guys about winning the game on a six-inch field — you know, between the ears — and there were times today when we didn’t do that,” he added. “There were times when we did some pretty good things and we tied it up a couple of times. We just couldn’t get over the hump.”
Cortland led 8-6 at halftime, mainly because junior Pat Baldwin dominated in a faceoff showdown against senior Drew Simoneau of the Golden Flyers. Simoneau came in leading the nation with a 73 percent success rate winning faceoffs, Baldwin not far behind at just under 70 percent.
Baldwin won 12 of the 15 faceoffs taken in the opening half as Cortland had an abundance of offensive chances. Or as Nazareth’s Randall said: “When we had the ball on offense we did okay, but we played a lot of defense.”
Simoneau held his own in the second half, the final faceoff count 15-11 in Baldwin’s favor.
“Overall, Baldwin had a day and definitely out-played the kid,” said Beville, as Cortland also finished with a slight 39-35 shot advantage while also converting all three of its extra-man scoring opportunities into goals.
It was a man-up goal that helped turned things Cortland’s way at the end of the opening half after Nazareth had reeled off three straight goals — a surge capped by Hunter Burdick finding the upper corner of the net to pull the Golden Flyers even at 6-6 with 5:12 left before halftime.
CORTLAND’S CANTELLI was given room to crank up a shot moments after Nazareth was penalized for a push to put Cortland ahead 7-6 with just 1:01 left in the second quarter, frosh Phelps with the assist.
Baldwin secured another faceoff and Cortland scored again when Phelps rolled to the inside to get free on the doorstop of the crease and the Red Dragons headed into the break up 8-6.
When Rakoczy connected 1:43 into the second half, Cortland had another three-goal advantage. Nazareth never got closer than two goals the rest of the way.
“They’ve got some good shooters. They’ve got a lot of great athletes and we didn’t do a good job defending at times and I don’t think we did a good job clearing the ball at times,” said Nazareth’s Randall.
The Golden Flyers are dangerous on offense, Troy Haefele and Will Fallo with two-goal success in the loss.
Cortland has become dangerous, too — with only three SUNY Athletic Conference games left in the regular season for the first place Red Dragons starting with Saturday’s 2:30 p.m visit to Oneonta.
“We’re headed in the right direction for playoffs right now and we want to keep rolling... SUNYACs and then the NCAAs,” said Hopps. “We just keep everything good in practice. We’ve been doing well up-tempo and it continues into a game and obviously it’s showing.”
In this recent win streak, Montclair State, Ithaca (in overtime) and Nazareth were nationally-ranked foes knocked off by the Red Dragons.
“We’re starting to build a good resume. Now we have to take care of business,” says Beville.