UNE earns win in ‘revenge’ game

BIDDEFORD — There was one word that reverberated louder than the rest in the University of New England men’s lacrosse pregame huddle before Saturday’s matchup with Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Revenge.

The Engineers had gotten the better of last year’s highly physical, three-overtime affair, 9-8, and the Nor’easters wanted payback.

It wasn’t easy, but in the end, UNE got it, gutting out a 7-6 victory in a game in which the Nor’easters never trailed, but also never led by more than two.

“It was a similar game to last year,” UNE senior attackman Tyler Thomas said. “Fortunately, we ended up on the winning side this year and get some sort of revenge for what happened last year.”

Thomas was the hero of the day, scoring two goals and assisting on three more, including Sam Cloutier’s snipe with eight minutes to go that broke a 5-5 tie and gave UNE the lead for good.

The win moves UNE to 3-2 overall on the season, ending a two-game losing slide, but Thomas said it was still far from the Nor’easters’ best game.

“We played down to our opponent today. It’s no disrespect to MIT, but we know we can play a lot better than this,” he said. “I think this was kind of a good wake up call, realizing that if we play down to our opponent, we can lose games just as easily as we can win them.

“But we pulled it out enough to get the win and it was good to get back in the column.”

UNE twice took the lead in the early going on Thomas tallies, only to be pulled back both times by MIT (0-2) goals from Jake Slonaker and Paul Orrson.

But just 43 seconds after Orrson’s tally, Eddie Burke put the Nor’easters up with 10:07 left in the half, and UNE extended the edge to two with four seconds remaining on a Pat Wolfe man-advantage goal to lead 4-2 at the half.

The Engineers’ Jonah Hessels narrowed the advantage to one early in the third, but another Wolfe man-up goal got it back to two midway through the period.

MIT had two chances to cut into the margin on one-minute power plays late in the third, but both times were denied by a sound Nor’easters’ shorthanded defense as the score remained 5-3 after three.

“Those were big. Our man-down defense did a good job on those,” UNE coach Charlie Burch said. “They weren’t doing a whole lot fancy, but you can always get a guy open on the backside for a good shot, and we stopped them.”

While the defense kept the brick wall up, on the other end, the Nor’easters attack also couldn’t get anything past MIT goalie Christopher Rullan, who made 17 saves in all. His play kept the Engineers in the game, and goals from Luke Verdi and Chris Cook in the first six minutes of the fourth tied things up at 5-5, forcing Burch into a timeout.

“He just said we need one right here and it’s kind of a gut check time and we found it within ourselves to pull it out late,” Thomas said of Burch’s timeout speech.

Whatever the coach said, it worked, with Cloutier scoring off a feed from Thomas to give UNE the lead back with eight minutes to go and Mike Allan adding a seventh six minutes later.

That insurance goal turned out to be all-important when Cook scored his second with 18 seconds left to get MIT back within one. The Engineers won the resulting draw and raced down the field, but couldn’t get a shot on goalie Jay Letendre’s cage as the Nor’easters came away with the closest of victories.

“Even an ugly win, the final determination is it was a win,” Burch said. “We’ll take it.”

UNE will now go on its annual spring break road trip, starting with a trek to upstate New York to take on Morrisville State on Tuesday before heading south to Madison, N.J., for a Thursday matchup with Fairleigh Dickinson.

The Nor’easters have never faced either school before, and Thomas said it was important to carry the momentum gained Saturday into both contests, with consistency and more patience on the offensive end being the key.

“We are going on spring break, but it is important to get these wins, and we have to realize that’s the main goal of this trip,” Thomas said. “We’ve never gone undefeated on spring break, so we’re really trying to do that and get these wins.”

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