Bucs Knocked out of Playoff Contention by Lyons

NORTON, Mass – Wednesday evening, the Buccaneers travelled to Wheaton College for their final conference road game of the season against the Lyons. Coming in to the game, both the Bucs and Lyons were winless in the NEWMAC. Unfortunately, the Lyons changed that, getting in to the win column, beating the Bucs, 11-9.

For the Buccaneers, Alexandre Lucas (Walpole, Mass) and Colby Unterstein (Ellington, Conn) tied for the team lead with two goals each. Unterstein also assisted on two other Maritime goals. Leading scorer Ben Avakian (Bourne, Mass) scored once in the game on five shots on target. Senior captain, Ted Powers (Marshfield, Mass) also scored once. Frank Ragge (Scituate, Mass), Trey Guerrini (Foxborough, Mass) and Spencer Jones (Hyannis, Mass) all scored for the Bucs in the loss. Guerrini added two assists to his score line. Defensively, Andrew Cook (Quincy, Mass) caused a game-high three turn overs for Maritime. Starting goalie Michael Dolan (McLean, Va) picked up the loss in net. He faced nine shots, allowed six goals and made three saves. In relief, Matthew Pierson (Longmeadow, Mass) played the second half, also faced nine shots, made four saves and allowed five Lyon goals.

Wheaton were led by CJ Leighton and Alex Stomberg who each had three goals. Leighton added two assists, Stomberg had one. Five other players scored for the Lyons, including Gil Bach who also had an assist. Dylan Janovic led Wheaton defensively with two caused turnovers. Goalie Chandler Miller picked up the win between the pipes, facing 27 shots, making 18 saves and allowing the nine Maritime goals.

The Buccaneers broke the scoreless tie with just under nine minutes to play in the first quarter on Powers' first goal of the evening. Wheaton followed that up with a goal less than 15 second later off of the face off to tie the game. The Lyons added a second goal less than a minute after their first to take the lead for the first time. 2-1 Lyons was the score at the end of one.

In the second, it took both teams some time to find anything offensively. Just past the halfway mark of the quarter Avakian found the back of the net to tie the game up at twos. Unterstein would give the guests the lead for the second time in the game with six minutes to play before the break. Down 3-2, Wheaton found offensive momentum at the five minute mark and proceeded to score four unanswered goals, taking the lead back, for good, on the second one in the sequence, netted by Stomberg. Now 6-3 Wheaton, the teams went to the half time break.

To start the second half, the teams alternated goals. Wheaton scored 55 seconds in to the third quarter to go up 7-3. Maritime answered, Wheaton rebutted and the Bucs closed out the quarter with a Jones goal in a man-up situation with just over two minutes left in the quarter to make the score 8-5.

The Bucs pulled back within one goal early in the fourth, scoring back-to-back goals, both by Lucas, bringing the score to 8-7. The Lyons promptly opened the lead back up to three goals before the ten minute mark of the final quarter. Guerrini made the score 10-8 with just under ten minutes to play. Followed by a Leighton score to give the Lyons their 11^th and final goal of the game. With 3:30 on the clock, the Bucs grabbed a Ragge goal in a man-up situation to get within two but that would be as close as they would get as they fell to 0-6 in the NEWMAC with an 11-9 loss.