HOBOKEN, N.J. - The Haverford College men's lacrosse team (0-2) dropped its first road contest of the season at the DeBaun Athletic Complex on the campus of Stevens (2-1) Wednesday evening, falling by a 17-9 final score to the homestanding Ducks.
Will Graves paced the Fords with a hat-trick, while senior captain Andrew Arth grabbed a pair of tallies. Arth also notched seven ground balls on the evening to pace the Fords, while Teddy Carlin added six from the face-off X. Andy Tieso made 13 saves between the pipes for Haverford.
The two sides started the contest with the offensive rhythm still a bit slow, with only two goals in the opening 10 minutes of play. Graves added the first score of the day for the visitors with 9:39 to play, and Arth later took a feed from Reid Tietjen with 3:50 left in the stanza to tie the score at 2-all.
Stevens unleashed a quick 3-0 run to take a 5-2 lead, and after Arth found the back of the net to pull things back within two, Stevens began to pull away, jetting out to a 9-3 lead after Miles du Bois tallied a player-up goal with 4:08 left in the half.
Undaunted, Haverford began to climb back in the contest from that point. Graves scored twice in the final four minutes of the first half, including a player-up opportunity with just 36 seconds left in the first frame. Off the opening whistle of the second half, faceoff specialist Drew Buck made his presence felt by grabbing the opening face-off win and charging down the field to tie the score just eight seconds into the second half, firing up the Fords bench.
Eric Dahlberg and Peter Christians then scored in succession and suddenly Haverford was back within just two with 7:38 left in the third quarter, with some designs on completing the comeback. Unfortunately for the visitors, the goal with 7:38 remaining served as a harbinger of a scoring drought as Stevens closed the contest on a 7-1 run to wrestle control of the victory. Tietjen tallied to interrupt the Ducks sequence on a nice feed from Jason Borsari, but a methodical Ducks attack whittled away opportunities to close the gap down the stretch.
Haverford scooped 30 ground balls to just 27 for Stevens, and controlled the battle at the X, winning 17-of-27 face-offs. Stevens rattled off 54 shots, and forced Haverford into 30 turnovers to stake its advantage.
Men's Lacrosse now faces another quick turnaround, heading down to Virginia to take on Mary Washington on Saturday in Fredericksburg. Game time is slated for 3:30 p.m. at Battleground Turf. Last season, the Fords earned a 15-14 win over UMW at Swan Field.