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The Fairfield University men's lacrosse team returns home to host Bellarmine University in an ECAC Lacrosse League contest on Saturday at noon, the team's second to last home game of the season.. The Stags are 6-3 on the year and 2-0 in the ECAC, while the Knights are 6-2 on the season and 2-2 in league play.
Fairfield is 4-1 this season at home and in five seasons under Andy Copelan is 21-11 in games played on Alumni Field and Lessing Field. Jordan Greenfield is averaging 4.0 points per game at home, with 15 goals, to pace the Stags to a 47-45 scoring advantage in the five games. Jack Murphy has stopped 58 percent of the shots he has faced at home, while allowing 9.00 goals per game. Fairfield is +14 in ground balls and +7 in turnovers at home this season, but is winning just 44 percent of face-offs. Last season the Stags were 5-2 at home. The Stags have secured a winning record for the home portion of the schedule this spring. Bellarmine is playing on the road for just the second time this spring, going 1-1, while playing six times at home.
Fairfield and Bellarmine are meeting for the fourth time, all as ECAC rivals, and the Stags are 3-0 in the series. The Stags won on the road last season, 9-8, thanks to the last second tally from Sam Snow. The series began at Bellarmine in 2010 with Fairfield winning 13-4. The only meeting at Fairfield came in 2011, a contest in which the Stags earned a 13-11 victory.
TJ Neubauer scored a career-high four times and earned ECAC Lacrosse Rookie of the Week honors, and Tristan Sperry added his second career hat trick as the Stags defeated Hobart 13-10 in Geneva, N.Y. on Saturday. Fairfield had seven different players touch net in a game that featured six ties and four lead changes. Michael Roe, the ECAC Specialist of the week, won a season-best 12 face-offs, including 7-12 in the second-half to help the Fairfield offense, which assisted on five goals. Roe had five of his game-high seven ground balls in the second half. The Stags raced out to a 5-2 lead, after trailing 2-1, but Hobart scored five of the next six goals, including three straight around halftime to build a 7-6 advantage. Neubauer tied the game-7-7 and Sperry put the Stags ahead 8-7 midway through the third quarter. Hobart tied the game 8-8 and 9-9, before Colin McLinden scored with one second left in the third quarter. Neubauer scored what would prove to be the decisive tally 1:45 into the fourth quarter. Jack Murphy made seven saves in earning the win for the Stags.
Fairfield has won three consecutive games entering Saturday, its longest streak of the season. The Stags have also won consecutive ECAC games and for the fourth time is 2-0 in league play. Fairfield has twice before made it to 3-0 in league play, doing so in 2009 and 2010, but have never achieved a 4-0 start in conference play.
Neubauer has been a consistent contributor thus far on the year, and broke out to a leading role at Hobart, with a career-best four goals. He scored his first career game-winner in that outing, to go along with his first two career man-up goals. Saturday's effort moved Neubauer to fifth on the roster with 11 points, as he has now touched net nine times. He has scored at least once in four straight games and in six of the last seven games that he has played.
The Stags have scored 85 times thus far on the year with a dozen different players scoring at least once and 10 of those touching net multiple times. Eleven different players have assists, with the Stags assisting on 52 percent of their goals scored, and eight have handed out three or more assists this spring.
Bellarmine has lost just twice this season, both in league play, and both times to top-10 teams (Loyola and Ohio State) by just two goals. The Knights had a three-game win streak snapped by then #8 Ohio State 9-7 on Saturday at home. The Knights have been impressive defensively, allowing just 6.88 goals per game to their opponents, while averaging nearly 10 goals a game on offense. Dillon Ward has stopped 115 shots for a nation's best .706 save percentage and boasts a tops in the country 6.40 GAA over his 450 minutes in goal this season. Cameron Gardner is the Knights leading goal scorer with 20, and is second with 23 points. Karsen Leung has a team leading 25 points, off of a team-best 18 assists. David Heering has a team-high 46 face-off wins (34%) while Stephen Soriano has won 53% of his face-offs. Bobby Schmitt has a team-best 36 ground balls, with the team holding a +14 advantage in the category. Bellarmine is 6-25 in man-up and foes are 7-26.
