By Allison Goldsmith
I&M Sports Editor
The boys lacrosse team earned a split this week, defeating Maritime League opponent New Bedford 10-2 following a 7-6 overtime loss to Falmouth.
The Whalers, who improved to 2-1 overall and 2-0 in the Maritime League, are scheduled to play league foe Nauset at home today.
Against New Bedford on Tuesday with senior attackmen Adam Goodwin and Alex Clark in Spain on a school trip, the Whalers were forced to shuffle the line-up and subsequently had some struggles on the offensive end.
“We got plenty of looks at the goal. We missed a couple of dozen easy shots, so that’s something we will obviously work on before the Nauset game,” head coach Rick Blair said, acknowledging the more than 35 shots the Whalers took on net.
Despite the shooting troubles, Nantucket escaped with 10 goals to their credit. Caleb Wiley led the scoring with three goals and two assists, while Drew Whelden (one assist) and Jesse Sandole each chipped in with two goals. Sam Siegel, Ethan Farrell (one assist) each scored once Ry Murphy (one assist) and Brennan Dooley and Teddy Cahill contributed with one assist a piece.
Tucker Harvey needed only five saves in net for the win.
“We possessed the ball for most of the game. They didn’t threaten to score except for a couple of spurts late in the first quarter,” Blair said.
The Whalers led 4-2 at the break.
Against Falmouth last Wednesday, the Whalers led for the entire game until there were just over three minutes remaining. The Clippers scored the game-tying goal on a botched clearing opportunity, sending the match into overtime. The Whalers had nice looks at the net in the extra frame, but Falmouth came down on a breakaway and found the open man out of the box to score the game-winner three minutes in.
“It was a game in many ways we should have won. With a little more depth and a couple more good decisions it would have been our game,” Blair said.
“We did an outstanding job of making good decisions for 46 minutes, but in the last two minutes we made some mental errors that let the game into over time.”
Farrell led the Whalers with 13 of 15 face-off wins, while scoring two goals and notching an assist on the first goal of the game. Whelden (two goals), Sandole (one goal and one assist), Siegel (one goal) and Wiley (one assist) all contributed to the offense for Nantucket. Harvey made 12 saves in net.
After taking a 3-1 lead into the half and a 5-3 lead into the fourth quarter, the Whalers allowed Falmouth to stick around.
“(Falmouth) played very hard, contested every ground ball. They had a lot of depth and a lot of speed and they got the best out of their skill players. We did a great job of taking those two guys out of the game for most of the game,” Blair said.
Eric Santos played well on defense against Falmouth’s top attackman Mike Balbuena, and the Whalers’ man-down defense was outstanding as the Clippers did not score a man-up goal the whole game, Blair said.
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