ITHACA, N.Y. – The Big Red men's lacrosse team held Dartmouth scoreless for the first 28:14 of the contest as it built a 7-0 lead and rolled to a 14-5 victory this afternoon on Schoellkopf Field.  Cornell sophomore Colton Rupp tallied a career-high five goals, matching the offensive output of the Big Green, as the Big Red surrendered a season-low five tallies in the victory.
 
Rupp added an assist to finish with a career-high six points, while freshman attackman Jeff Teat matched the game high performance with five assists and one goal. Jake McCulloch chipped in two goals and one assist, while Clarke Petterson (one goal, one assist) and Paul Rasimowicz (two assists) were the only other multi-point scorers.
 
Cornell had 12 different players register a point and the Big Red assisted on 12-of-14 goals.
 
Rasimowicz' assists were the first points of his college career as the freshman face-off man won 14-of-20 in the circle and picked up a career-high 10 ground balls.
 
Defensively, Walt Gahagan was outstanding, matching the school record with a career-high six caused turnovers and two ground balls while freshman Brandon Salvatore caused three turnovers and had five ground balls.
 
In goal, Christian Knight earned the win with a solid performance, making eight saves and allowing four goals in 57:27. He also caused two turnovers and picked up two ground balls. Sophomore Teddy Strzetelski came on in relief and allowed a man-up goal and made one save in the final 2:33 of the game.
 
The Big Red held the edge in shots (52-30), shots on goal (30-14), ground balls (48-35), and face-offs (15-of-23). Dartmouth had six more turnovers (27-21) and cleared the ball successfully just 19-of-27 times, while the home team went 18-of-19.
 
Cornell (2-6, 1-2) dominated the game from the start forcing the Big Green into 12 turnovers in the first quarter, including an abysmal 2-of-9 performance in the clearing game, and did not allow Dartmouth to take a single shot over the first 15 minutes of the contest.
 
"Our riding game set the tone early," said Matt Kerwick, the Richard M. Moran Head Coach of Lacrosse. "I thought we put a whole effort in today, which is something we've been working towards, and it was nice to see it pay off."
 
Six different Big Red players scored as the home team took a 7-0 lead with just over five minutes to go before halftime. Wiley Osborne ended the Dartmouth drought at the 1:46 mark of the second quarter, but a goal by Rupp less than 30 seconds later restored the seven-goal advantage to the Big Red.
 
Osborne finished with a team-high three goals for the Big Green.   
 
Dartmouth outscored Cornell 2-1 in the third quarter to make it a 9-3 game, but that was as good as it got for the visitors. The Big Red scored the first three goals of the fourth, including two from Rupp, and rolled to the 14-5 victory.
 
Cornell is back in action next weekend when it travels to Harvard to take on the Crimson on Saturday, April 8 at 1 p.m.