Dartmouth Drops 7-6 Heartbreaker to Wagner at Home

HANOVER, N.H. – Dartmouth men’s lacrosse opened its five-game home schedule on Saturday with a 7-6 loss to Wagner at Scully-Fahey Field on Saturday afternoon, leading for almost the entire game until the visitors took the lead with just 21 seconds remaining in the contest.

The Big Green fell to 0-4, while the Seahawks defeated Dartmouth for the first time in program history and improved to 2-3. 

Junior Wiley Osborne led the team with four goals and was the only Green player to get into double digits. Four other players ended the day with a point apiece.

It took almost 12 minutes and a combined 15 shots before the first goal of the game was scored. With 3:47 left in the first, Wagner’s Paul DeVita netted an unassisted tally that proved to be the only marker of the quarter. A minute and a half later, Osborne had Dartmouth’s best chance at a goal when his shot hit the crossbar.

The Green outscored the Seahawks, 3-1, in the second, and all three tallies came from Osborne. His first two goals early in the quarter were scored just eight seconds apart; the first was assisted by freshman Austin Meacham and the second was unassisted. With 5:30 remaining, Wagner tied it at two-all, but Osborne gave Dartmouth the go-ahead just 19 seconds later, with the helper going to junior Don Stephan.

With a 3-2 lead at the start of the third, Dartmouth and Wagner traded goals until two in a row by the Seahawks tied the score at five with 57 ticks left on the clock. With just six seconds remaining in the quarter, sophomore Evan Key got his first of the game and his third of the season – an unassisted tally made possible by a long clear by senior goalkeeper Blair Friedensohn – to give the home team a 6-5 edge heading into the fourth.

Defense was the word in the fourth, as neither team allowed much in the way of shots. The first goal of the quarter occurred with 2:36 left, a tally by Billy Martin that tied the score at six-all. With 21 seconds on the clock, Andrew Streilein gave the visitors their first lead since the opening quarter with the only man-up goal of the contest, and that would be an edge that would last until the end of the game. 

Wagner outshot Dartmouth, 37-31, while the Green went 12-for-17 at the X. Friedensohn played all 60 minutes and had eight saves, while the Seahawks’ Matt Sefcik made 12 stops.

The Big Green will take two weeks off and will return to action on Saturday, March 19 with a 1 p.m. game at Michigan.