CLEVELAND (4/29/2017) -- It was a tough week dealing with finals and a road trip, but in the end, the University of Detroit Mercy men's lacrosse team found out it will have a chance to make a run at a championship next weekend.
The Titans went on the road and fell to Cleveland State, 13-6, on Saturday evening, but it was in New York where the conference playoff picture was finally decided as Marist was able to score three goals in the final 50 seconds to knock off Siena, giving Detroit Mercy the final seed in the MAAC Championships.
Detroit Mercy (5-10, 3-3 MAAC) will now take on top-seeded Monmouth on Friday, May 5, at 4 p.m., at Tenney Stadium on the campus of Marist in Poughkeepsie, New York, the site of the 2017 MAAC Championship.
The Titans saw Cleveland State (5-9) get off to quick start that was too much to overcome. Detroit Mercy had five different goal scorers on the day led by two from senior
Kyle Beauregard. Juniors
Sean Birney and
Alec Gilhooly, sophomore
Matthew Vangalen and freshman
Seth Mendell each had one. Gilhooly and Mendell also added an assist.
Senior
Jason Weber made 10 saves and scooped up a career-high eight ground balls and junior
Charlie Hayes and freshman
Alex Akins recorded two caused turnovers apiece.
Cleveland State scored the first two goals of the game before Gilhooly found Mendell at the 9:47 mark in the first.
Birney added his tally in the second and then Gilhooly registered a man-up marker in the third.
The Titans posted three goals in the fourth as Mendell found Vangalen and he beat the goalie early in the quarter. Beauregard then found the back of the net with eight minutes left and had a man-up strike with just over three minutes remaining.
Beauregard also finished the game with a career-high two caused turnovers, and sophomore
Austin Ross had a caused turnover and career-high three ground balls.
The Titans were 22-of-23 in clears and 2-for-4 on the extra-man attack.
The trip back to the playoffs marks the sixth time in Detroit Mercy's eight years in the MAAC that the Titans will have qualified for postseason play.
Game Notes:
Detroit Mercy and Cleveland State are two of 14 new Division I programs that have been added since 2009 which includes Jacksonville (2010), Mercer (2011), High Point (2013), Michigan (2012), Marquette (2013), Boston (2014), Furman (2014), Monmouth (2014), Richmond (2014), NJIT (2015), UMass Lowell (2015) and Hampton (2016)… When the Titans won the MAAC Championship in 2013, they also had a loss to a first-year program in Marquette on the road… Weber now has 675 career saves and is fifth in school history with 158 ground balls… Vangalen inched closer to the school record in total season points as he is now in third place with 45, three away from second place in Joel Matthews' 48 in 2010 and four shy of Shayne Adams' 49 in 2014… Hayes is sixth in school history with 33 caused turnovers…
Nick Boynton and
Charlie Schiefer made their collegiate debuts in the game…
