BALTIMORE – The #12 Cornell men's lacrosse team was once again firing on all cylinders, and led by junior John Piatelli's and freshman Michael Long's four goals apiece, the Big Red offense fueled the squad to a 17-10 victory over Towson on Friday afternoon at Johnny Unitas® Stadium in Baltimore. With the victory, Cornell improves to 2-0 on the season.
Towson jumped out to a 2-1 lead to start the contest after early Cornell turnovers led to a pair of transition goals for the Tigers, but the Big Red responded with three unanswered goals of its own to claim a 4-2 advantage. Connor Fletcher notched the first two Cornell goals, and then Jonathan Donville and J. Piatelli joined the party, each scoring for the Big Red.
Towson brought the score to within one after a Cornell defensive miscue, but Paul Rasimowicz quickly got the Big Red back on the right track, winning the ensuing face-off and scoring his first goal of the season to make the score 5-3 at the end of the first quarter.
Led by Rasimowicz, Cornell absolutely dominated in the face-off circle in the first quarter, winning eight of the nine face-offs and not allowing Towson to record a face-off victory until there were just over four minutes remaining in the quarter. Rasimowicz went 7-of-8 in the opening 10 minutes of play and freshman Angelo Petrakis picked up a victory in the face-off circle in the quarter as well.
The Tigers started to come to life on offense at the onset of the second quarter, scoring three of the next four goals to tie things up at 6-6. However, that was about as much offensive rhythm as Towson would experience in the contest, as Long quickly put the Tigers in their place. Scoring his first collegiate goal just wasn't enough for Long. Instead, he went for the natural hat trick, scoring three goals in 3:01 from the 9:55 mark to the 6:54 mark of the quarter to give Cornell a 9-6 lead that it would never relinquish.
With the natural hat trick, this marks the second-straight contest that Cornell has accomplished this feat, as Cooper Telesco did so against UAlbany last Saturday. This makes it the first time since 2014 that the Big Red has had multiple natural hat tricks in the same season. The 2014 season included three natural hat tricks, coming from Dan Lintner '14 against Binghamton, Connor Buczek '15 against Penn, and Matt Donovan '15 against Yale.
The Big Red held a 10-6 advantage at halftime and picked up right where it left off to begin the second half. JJ Lombardi and J. Piatelli scored the first two goals of the third quarter to give Cornell a 12-6 lead, making that six unanswered goals from the closing minutes of the second quarter and into the start of the third.
Towson had a brief moment in the spotlight, netting its first goal in over 14 minutes of play at the 9:33 mark in the third quarter, but J. Piatelli quickly squashed that, scoring his third and fourth goals of the game to bring the score to 14-7 in favor of the Big Red. Cornell outscored Towson in the third quarter, 5-2, and led 15-8 heading into the fourth quarter. Towson put two more goals on the board in the fourth, but so did Cornell, who went on to win the game, 17-10.
Long and J. Piatelli finished the contest with a game-high four goals, while Fletcher also notched a hat trick. After leading the team in goals in its previous contest against UAlbany, Donville effectively distributed the ball to his teammates today, tallying a game-high three assists to go along with his goal. With Long and Fletcher each adding an assist of their own to the stat sheet, the Big Red had four student-athletes collect at least four points. Long led the squad with five points.
The Big Red attacked Towson from all angles, as eight different Cornell student-athletes notched a goal. Cooper Telesco scored two goals and posted his second-straight multi-goal performance of the season while Jeff Teat added one. As a team, the Big Red recorded 30 shots on goal as compared to Towson's 18.
After destroying Towson in the face-off circle in the first quarter, it comes as no surprise that the Big Red won the face-off battle on Friday, winning 21 of the 31 face-offs. Both Petrakis and Rasimowicz made it extremely challenging for the Tigers in the face-off circle, as Petrakis finished the contest an impressive 13-of-17 (0.765) and Rasimowicz went 8-of-14 (0.571).
Brandon Salvatore led the Big Red's defensive efforts, collecting a game-high seven ground balls and forcing a game-high three caused turnovers. Petrakis also picked up six ground balls, as he and Salvatore helped Cornell win the battle on the ground, collecting 40 ground balls next to the Tigers' 28.
Chayse Ierlan recorded his second victory of the season in goal on Friday, making six saves, while Caelahn Bullen also saw time and posted two saves.
The #12 Cornell men's lacrosse team will be back in action on Sunday, Feb. 23 when it takes on High Point at noon in a neutral site game at Calvert Hall High School in Baltimore.
