Considering No. 18 Michigan Lacrosse’s upcoming gauntlet, which includes contests with No. 11 Army, No. 20 Denver, No. 12 Harvard, No. 6 Notre Dame and No. 16 Johns Hopkins, it had to beat unranked Lehigh at home to stay ahead of the curve.
The Wolverines (3-1) did not do that, as the Mountain Hawks (2-1) won 14-13 Saturday afternoon.
Michigan could not have started the game any worse, going down 5-0 not even 11 minutes in. Lehigh did whatever it wanted on offense, stifled the Wolverines’ attack and
rode that advantage to victory.
The Mountain Hawks continually took advantage of Michigan’s short-stick defensive midfielders with inverted dodges from X and the weak sliding game did little favors for senior goaltender Hunter Taylor.
Taylor still made 12 saves and largely kept his team alive with his brilliance in tight, but he and the defense were still scorched in the early on.
Junior attackman Nick Roode finally got the Wolverines on the board early in the second quarter with an inside finish from junior attackman Alex Lobel, to which Lehigh responded with a tally of its own four minutes later.
Down 6-1, Michigan finally found its footing as sophomore Tommy Augustine used his soft hands to pick up an extra-man opportunity rebound and bury it. Graduate midfielder John Morgan won his dodge and scored a diver, then freshman attackman Luke Shannehan continued his torrid pace with a lefty sweep rip, cutting the lead to 6-4.
The Mountain Hawks responded with a low-angle score, again dodging on a SSDM from behind the cage. The Wolverines got the next two as junior midfielder Matt Han hit Maryland grad transfer Eliot Dubick as he curled around goal-line extended and Shannehan got another in transition (set up by senior SSDM Carson Billig’s caused turnover) to make it 7-6 early in the third quarter.
Michigan kept scratching at that deficit before finally taking its first lead of the contest late in the third, 10-9, when Dubick hit Han inside for the easy finish.
However, the 1-on-1 defense was simply not good enough, the slide packages were late and Lehigh kept responding, grabbing an 11-10 lead.
The Wolverines punched back with Shannehan’s third, and junior FOGO Jackie Weller scored off the draw six seconds later.
The Mountain Hawks tied it at 12, Roode gave Michigan the 13-12 advantage with 6:30 left in the fourth, but Lehigh, in this ultimate back-and-forth thriller, snagged the final two scores to go up 14-13.
The Wolverines got a huge stop from Taylor with 90 seconds left to give the offense one last chance; Roode had a slightly fading look from six feet go wide, and the buzzer sounded shortly thereafter.
Michigan is still 3-1 and it is only mid-February, but that aforementioned upcoming schedule could derail this campaign if it does not play a smarter, harder defensive brand and a more complete 60 minutes.
