When Tommy Heller scored his first goal of the day for Gettysburg College’s men’s lacrosse team in the second quarter of the NCAA Division III semifinals Sunday evening, he thought momentum was on his team’s side.
“I definitely wouldn’t say that I thought we were out of the game at that point,” Heller said. “We were still playing hard.”
Heller’s goal made the gap between the Bullets and the Salisbury University Sea Gulls shrink. At that point, with more than six minutes to play until halftime, the Bullets trailed by just a pair of scores.
More than 20 minutes of gameplay would pass before Gettysburg would score again – on another goal from Heller. In that same time, Salisbury found the back of the net five more times and built a six-goal lead going into the final period.
The Bullets would have to score a lot in the final 15 minutes if they wanted to play for a national title. Instead, they scored only twice in the fourth quarter while the Sea Gulls piled on more goals.
Although just three goals separated Gettysburg and Salisbury in their regular season meeting, the Bullets were no match for the Sea Gulls on May 22. The Bullets’ season ended as the Sea Gulls’ campaign continued with a 14-6 victory.
Salisbury will play for their 11th national title on Sunday, May 29 in Philadelphia at Lincoln Financial Field against Tufts University.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” said Jim Berkman, Salisbury’s coach. “We always have a battle (with Gettysburg). We’re very fortunate and very excited to return to the championship game.”
Gettysburg’s defense is fourth best in all of Division III lacrosse and allowedjust 5.89 goals-per-game this season. Defenders Geoff Davis and Bill McAvoy have started every game for the Bullets at close defense and each have more than 30 ground balls and 15 caused turnovers to their name this season.
But coming into this contest, the Sea Gulls were scoring 16.5 goals-per-game, good enough for fifth in the country. This would be a match-up of a great offense and a great defense, and two of the best coaches to ever walk the sidelines of college lacrosse.
Berkman leads all NCAA lacrosse coaches with 488 wins and Gettysburg’s Hank Janczyk, who Berkman coached under for some time, is second to Berkman with 423 wins.
In the end, Berkman and his great offense came out on top.
“I just have to tip my hat to Salisbury today,” Janczyk said. “They played harder than we did. They kept the pressure up, and their face-off and wing guys did a super job. You give a team like that the ball 16 more times than we have it then it’s a tough one to win.”
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Salisbury’s Carson Kalama made it 2-0 for the Sea Gulls early in the first quarter when he scooped up a ground ball from a Brendan Bromwell shot and tossed it into the net. A few minutes later, after a Gettysburg score by Jameson Smith, Kalama dished the ball to James Burton during an extra-man opportunity for a score.
Heading into halftime, the Sea Gulls had built a 7-3 lead. Kalama scored his second goal of the day just before the end of the second quarter after getting a feed from Nathan Blondino during another extra-man opportunity.
The Bullets gave up seven goals to the Sea Gulls in the first half, which is the most they have allowed any team to score in the opening half of any game all season.
“We kind of shot ourselves in the foot early in the game,” said Gettysburg’s Smith, the Centennial Conference Player of the Year. “We just tried to force a couple looks and had a couple turnovers that were unnecessary and that kind of put us in a bigger hole and as their lead grew we tried to do things that we don’t normally do.”
Blondino scored his second goal of the day on a man-up opportunity about two minutes into the third quarter off an assist from Burton. Burton would score his third goal of the game minutes later and then Kalama notched his third score via a Jake Rotman assist at the 7:15 mark in the third quarter.
While the Bullets’ defense slipped, so did its offense. 20 minutes and 32 seconds passed between Heller’s scores.
One of the reasons why Gettysburg scored so few goals is because they didn’t win many possessions. Salisbury scooped up 46 ground balls to Gettysburg’s 19 and Salisbury won 19-of-22 face-offs with T.J. Logue taking 16 of those.
“I was just doing everything I was taught in practice and my wings helped me out a lot,” Logue said. “It’s easy to win when you have great wings like that.”
The face-off man often gets the credit for winning at the X and controlling possession, but Berkman and Logue both gave praise to Salisbury’s wings.
Andrew Ternahan led the way with 14 groundballs, but Berkman wanted to shine the light on one of his under-the-radar players who does a lot of dirty work.
“Davis Anderson, for four years, has been the most unrecognized player in the game,” Berkman said.
Anderson came away with five ground balls and forced a turnover.
Janczyk said that coming into this game, the Bullets were without their top face-off man and their top left-handed scorer, due to injuries.
Kalama finished the day with five goals to increase his total on the season to 57. Kalama scored his final goal in the fourth quarter when Capital Athletic Conference Player of the YearThomas Cirillo scooped up a ground ball and dished it to the 5-foot-5 junior attack.
Blondino scored four goals for Salisbury and Burton ended the day with three goals and two assists.
Aside from the high-powered offense, Salisbury’s defense proved to be important in the win too.
Junior goalkeeper Colin Reymann missed the first meeting between Salisbury and Gettysburg while he was nursing a hand injury, but started this game and halted most the scoring opportunities the Bullets mustered up.
As Sea Gulls continue surge, Reymann has stepped up
“Watching that last Gettysburg game gave me some perspective and appreciation for the sport and their team, in particular,” Reymann said. “Going over the scouting report and watching that film helped me play to a competitive level today.”
Reymann finished with nine saves and five goals allowed.
“It was their day today,” Janczyk said. “That’s all I can say. They just played better than us today.”
Salisbury will face Tufts for the national title. The Jumbos beat St. Lawrence 23-12 on Sunday and are looking to three-peat as Division III champs.
In 2014they beat the Sea Gulls 12-9 for the crown in Baltimore.
“I was on the sidelines for that game,” Kalama said. “This is going to be a big week of practice for us, but we’ll be ready on Sunday.”
The Sea Gulls have six days to prepare.
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