CHESTERTOWN — Washington will get a chance to avenge a late-season loss to No. 9-ranked Gettysburg when the teams face off Thursday night in the semifinal round of the Centennial Conference men’s lacrosse tournament.
The 7 p.m. game will be played on the Bullets’ turf because they clinched the No. 2 seed with Saturday’s 18-11 victory over Franklin & Marshall in the regular-season finale.
Washington [12-5, 6-2] is the No. 3 seed
Meantime, four-time defending champion Dickinson topped Muhlenberg, 17-5, on Saturday to secure the top seed.
No. 8-ranked Dickinson [14-2, 7-1 CC] will host Swarthmore [11-7, 4-4 CC] in Thursday’s other semifinal.
Despite the loss to Dickinson on Saturday, Muhlenberg [10-8, 5-3 CC] nabbed the No. 4 seed due to Swarthmore’s loss to Haverford on the final day of the regular season.
Swarthmore eliminated host Muhlenberg, 16-4, in Tuesday’s play-in game.
The winners of Thursday’s semis will advance to Saturday’s championship game at the highest remaining seed.
The Shoremen head into the playoffs having competed well in a 6-4 loss at No. 7 Salisbury on Friday, April 24.
With the win, Salisbury University [14-3] holds on to the Charles B. Clark Cup — named for a 1934 graduate of Washington College who coached both programs to national prominence — for the 12th year in a row.
SU improved to 38-20 in the series, and has won 24 of the last 25 match-ups.
The combined 10 goals is the fewest in the history of the War on the Shore.
Salisbury held Washington to its lowest scoring output of the season and foiled all six of WC’s man-up opportunities.
Before the game, Salisbury honored its 19 seniors.
The Sea Gulls broke the ice with a Connor Herraiz feed to Chris Wong, who twisted his bid into the back of the cage with 8 minutes, 29 seconds remaining in the opening frame.
The Shoremen soon found their footing with solo runs from Carson Crawford and Aiden Ventura to take their only lead, 2-1, with five and a half minutes remaining in the first quarter.
Five minutes into the second quarter, Bret Bergey tied it up off a pass from Herraiz.
On the following face-off, Blake Malamphy won possession and found the back of the net while charging into the attacking end. He repeated that sequence on the next draw to give the Gulls a 4-2 advantage with 9:58 remaining in the half, punctuating a run of three goals scored in 11 seconds.
The Salisbury defense pitched a shutout in the second stanza, which included two Matt Sentowski saves and three penalties killed off to preserve the two-goal lead going into halftime.
The Sea Gulls also kept their guests off the board in the third quarter while getting goals from Ryan Della and Trent Lucovich to lengthen the lead to 6-4.
Della’s unassisted goal with 3:26 elapsed in the second half held up as the game-winner. Lucovich scored the insurance goal four minutes later, man-up and off a feed from Herraiz.
Jake Laubach’s unassisted goal with 9:29 remaining halted Washington’s extended scoring drought. He assisted Reeve Hargrave at the 2:10 mark to close the gap to 6-4.
Malamphy [11-of-13 in face-offs] won the ensuing draw and the Sea Gulls got the game clock down to 49 seconds before losing possession on a wide shot.
Washington subsequently turned the ball over, and time soon expired.
Salisbury led 47-25 in total shots, but the margin was a slim 18-14 in shots on goal.
Both keepers played well — Sentowski coming up with 10 saves for the home team and sophomore Skeet Hine, making his first start since March 14, with 12.
