LOUDONVILLE, N.Y. -- Despite a four-goal outburst from freshman Gage Snowbarger, the Virginia Military Institute men's lacrosse team fell victim to an early Siena College lead as the Saints defeated the Keydets 16-10 on Saturday.
Snowbarger had the best game of his career with the four goals, which included a natural hat trick in fourth quarter to spark a VMI rally. Junior Bernie Mowbray and freshman Alex Henthorn each scored a pair of goals while the former also added an assist to his day. Senior Russell East and freshman Dan Bull each scored one goal while sophomores Anthony Mordaga and Mike DeBlasio each had a pair of assists.
The Saints, who will be the No. 3 seed in the upcoming Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament, got an eight-point day from Richie Hurley on seven goals and one assist. Colin Clive and Kieran Donohue had three points on two goals and one assist while Nate Barry also had three points with one goal and two assists.Casey Dowd, Kyle Curry, Michael Pettit and Thomas Schoener had one goal each as Chris Carberry and Conor Prunty each had one assist.
In goal, senior Matt Lindemann made seven saves in his final game at VMI, where he will finish eighth all-time with 335 career saves. The Keydets' final MAAC game ever, saw Lindemann fall below the double-digit mark for just the second time this season.
“Really proud of the level of fight our guys had in the entire game,” said Brian Anken, who rounds out his third season at the helm of the Keydets. “We had a lot of opportunities for our guys to lose focus and get discouraged and instead continued to fight back and make a great run late in the game.”
VMI out-shot the Saints at Siena Turf Field 42-32, including 14 attempts to six in the finale 15 minutes of play. But the Saints took advantage of their shots, scoring eight goals in the first quarter on 11 shots. Siena put all 11 of its first quarter shots on cage.
The groundball battle was close, with Siena collecting 34 to VMI's 30. Freshman defenseman Ian Marinacci, who played off the bench, was the Keydets' leader with four groundballs. Ten different Keydets collected at least two groundballs while another six had one grounder.
Faceoffs were another close affair as the Keydets trotted out two specialists, Gaston Ledford and Luke Frizzell. Ledford won seven of his 17 draws while Frizzell went five for 12. Dowd went 16 of 25 at the X while teammate Rob Hunter won just one of his four chances.
The Saints jumped out to an early 3-0 lead on goals from Donohue, Hurley and Clive. Henthorn broke up the run to put VMI on the board with 7:44 to play in the first. But the Saints reeled off another five unanswered goals to grab an 8-1 lead at the end of the quarter. Hurley had three of the five goals during that stretch.
VMI took advantage of a three-minute non-releasable penalty after a defenseman was caught with an illegal stick. Mowbray put away his first goal of the day during the penalty, but the Saints won the ensuing faceoff, killed off the rest of the penalty and scored man-down to make it a 9-2 game. Henthorn stepped up once again for his second of the afternoon.
Siena rattled off another four goals to finish the second quarter and start the third, but the Keydets would strike twice in the third while only allowing two goals in the stanza. Snowbarger extended his point streak to seven games with an assist from DeBlasio.
Siena scored once more before Bull tallied his fourth goal of the year and first since March 12 at Wagner College. The Keydets found themselves down by nine goals, 14-5, heading into the final period.
Dowd scored after winning the opening faceoff, putting the Keydets down by double digits. But then the VMI offense began to click, reeling off five goals in a row, VMI's longest run of goals this season. Of those five tallies, three came from the stick of the Colorado Kid, Snowbarger, who posted not only his first career hat trick, but did it on three consecutive goals, making it a 15-8 game.
Mowbray and East helped keep things interesting as the former struck with 5:12 left and the latter with 3:04. East capped his career with a 21-game scoring streak, the longest active run in the MAAC, while tallying 40 goals in that time.
But the Saints iced the game with 56 seconds left as Pettit tallied his marker to finish things at 16-10.
While it was a difficult season for the Keydets, who will move into the Atlantic Sun Conference next season, the future is bright. Over half of VMI's points in 2013 came from the hands of freshmen and sophomores, including seven of Saturday's 10 goals.
“We knew coming into this year we were going to rely on a lot of our young players. The amount of playing time and experience they gained from this year is certainly going to help us moving forward. I'm very excited about the development of these young guys and their level of commitment to building our program,” said Anken of his roster, which is the youngest in the country with 73 percent of the team comprised of freshmen and sophomores.
