Hanover
The powerful, 6-foot-3 senior cut off a high pick and left two defenders in his wake, then fired a sizzling shot toward the crossbar while running from left to right. A split-second before the ball would have struck the twine, however, Pennsylvania goaltender Reed Junkin made one of the best saves of his three-year college career.
On tiptoe, arched like a limbo dancer and with his face pointed at the sky, Junkin raised his stick over his head just quickly enough to stop the missile’s progress.
The ball caromed high in the air and was caught on the fly on the opposite side of the cage by Dartmouth’s Matt Paul. The freshman curled back toward midfield and unloaded a shot of his own … which bounced wide.
Penn eventually triumphed, 10-9, midway through a second overtime.
“I felt like a rubber band,” Junkin said of his elastic pose. “Dartmouth is a desperate team and they’re definitely tough to play, but we’re suited for crunch time and pulled through a serious gut check.”
Said Dartmouth coach Brendan Callahan: “He stole one from us. It looked like the ball had gotten past him, and he reached behind his head and got it inches from the net.”
So it’s gone for Dartmouth, which is 2-10 overall, 0-5 in the Ivies this season and has lost 22 consecutive league games. Even when the Big Green takes contests to the wire, all too often that figurative strand becomes a garrote.
“We needed one more thing to go our way down the stretch, and we didn’t get it,” Callahan said. “If you would have told me that we’d have had the ball in Kozelius’ stick with a chance to win, that’s all you can ask for.”
Dartmouth might have won the game going away had it captured more than just eight of 23 faceoffs and forced Junkin to make more than six saves. Counterpart Alex Burnley was outstanding in stopping 14 shots. The freshman from Amherst, N.H., and Souhegan High was forced into action midway through the season when standout George Christopher was lost to thumb surgery, and has been overmatched and bombarded at times.
“Alex took a lot of extra shots this week,” said Callahan, who has sometimes used tennis balls for drills to avoid the possibility of Burnley being hurt. “He’s grown and grown, and it all came together for him today.”
Dartmouth had three leads but none of more than two goals. The hosts were up, 6-4, two minutes into the fourth quarter but surrendered the next four goals and trailed, 8-6, midway through the stanza. Ben Martin’s fourth strike of the afternoon pulled the Big Green within a goal, and Mike Connolly tallied for an 8-8 deadlock with four minutes to play in the quarter.
Penn (7-7, 3-3) went up, 9-8, with a minute to go. However, Dartmouth senior Richie Loftus, one of six seniors playing their last game at Scully-Fahey, struck with 27 seconds on the clock to force overtime.
“We’re a resilient group after what we’ve been through the last couple of weeks,” said Callahan, whose team was routed in three of its previous four games and lost the other in double overtime at UMass Lowell.
Penn’s winner came on a play that initially appeared benign.
Quaker Kevin McGeary ran the ball to the goal line on the left side before doubling back toward midfield. Dartmouth midfielders Korzelius and Chris Bacotti appeared to make a late switch, with the former a couple of steps behind McGeary as the midfielder took a jump shot off his front foot. The shoulder-high attempt flew inside the far post, and McGeary flung his stick high into the air in celebration.
Dartmouth was outshot, 44-26, but the Quakers put few of them on goal during the first half and much of the second. Penn did, however, clear its own end on all but one of its 18 chances and allowed the Big Green a single man-up tally in five opportunities. Loftus had four goals and two assists and Martin had four goals and an assist for Dartmouth.
The Big Green, which concludes its season at Brown on Saturday, is 0-7 on the road this season and has lost 19 consecutive games away from Hanover. Its last road victory was at Michigan in 2016. Dartmouth has not reached the four-team Ivy League tournament since the event debuted in 2010 and is the only Ancient Eight program without an appearance.
Notes: Dartmouth’s longest Ivy League losing streak is 31 games and stretched from 1988-93… Burnley has a twin, Foster, who’s a defender at Connecticut’s Salisbury School and is headed to Dartmouth later this year. Another brother, Blake, is a senior midfielder at Bard (N.Y.) College. … Dartmouth’s Tucker Brown, a junior faceoff man, has been playing goaltender in practice and dressed in netminding gear for Saturday’s game. NCAA Division I teams usually have three actual backstops on their rosters, but the Big Green has only two. … Dartmouth entered the day 63rd out of the 69 NCAA Division I teams in faceoff winning percentage at 40.3 percent. The Big Green was 68th in clearing percentage at 80.3 and 60th in turnovers at 15.18 per game. … Penn assistant coach Ryan Danehy is a former Big Green lacrosse and football player who worked as a lacrosse assistant coach under Callahan’s predecessor, Andy Towers. Danehy drove up from Long Island, N.Y., on Friday after helping direct practice for Major League Lacrosse’s New York Lizards, for whom he is the offensive coordinator. He hit the road immediately after the Quakers’ victory in hopes of arriving before the Lizards’ 7 p.m. faceoff against the Denver Outlaws. Denver’s head coach since 2013 has been B.J. O’Hara, who was 14-27 as Dartmouth’s coach from 1987-89. O’Hara’s time at the Big Green helm is not mentioned in his online Outlaws biography. Denver won last season’s MLL title. … Bill Wilson, who went 40-44 as Dartmouth’s coach from 2004-09, has been an Air Force assistant in recent years but was promoted to be the Falcons’ interim head coach for the current campaign. That team is 5-9 with one regular season game remaining.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.