March 22, 2008
George Carafides stopped 13 of 21 shots on goal and nearly helped the Yale men's lacrosse team engineer a major Ivy League and national upset. Ryan Hurley's goal with one second left in overtime gave No. 6 Cornell an 8-7 win at Ithaca.
Hurley, who had two goals and an assist, carried in from the corner, dodged one way and went the other before firing the ball into the upper right corner of the net to improve Cornell's record to 5-1 (1-0 Ivy).
The Big Red had five of the six shots in OT and survived the scare from the Bulldogs (1-4, 0-2), looking for their first win in the series since 1999.
Carafides, Yale's senior goalie, was facing a Big Red squad that had outscored the Elis 76 to 34 over the previous five meetings and was coming off a 20-goal performance against No. 20 Denver on Tuesday. He made two saves in the OT after making five in the second half.
At the other end, Jake Myers made 10 saves but didn't have any overtime scares.
The Red had the advantage in shots (43-31) but Yale's Gregory DuBoff won 12 of 18 faceoffs and the Blue had the edge in ground balls (23-20). The Elis were also successful on 19 of 21 clears while nearly winning for the first time at Ithaca in 12 years.
Cornell scored the first four goals and then the underdog Bulldogs reeled off six straight between 4:08 of the first and 4:18 of the third. First Jerome Arnold and Francis Johnson scored even-strength goals to cut the lead in half. Matt Fuchs and Tyler Casertano, who led the visitors with two goals and two assists, hit the net with the extra man to even the score by 6:55 of the third.
Casertano, whose streak of consecutive games with a point went to 32 games, notched a second straight unassisted tally to give the Bulldogs their first lead (5-4) at 5:34 of the third. Davis Lindsey made it a two-goal lead 44 seconds later when he converted a Michael Karwoski pass.
Chris Finn's only goal of the game at 10:48 closed the Yale lead to 6-5 and then John Espey, who had three points, scored unassisted at 4:45 to even the score at 6-6.
Eli attacker Kyle Washabaugh created his own opportunity and then hit the net with 1:12 left in the third to give the Bulldogs their last lead.
Max Seibald (2 goals) notched the only goal of the final period with 5:31 left to even things before both defenses took over the rest of the way.
Yale is home Tuesday night at 7 to face Hartford at Reese Stadium.
Recap filed by Steve Conn, Yale Sports Publicity Director
