O’Donnell must have showed a lot of poise, because he ended up playing all 60 minutes of the game and finishing with 10 saves.
“A lot of goaltending is about momentum,” he observed.
A lot of questions were answered in front of O’Donnell as well, as junior defenseman Tom Mikula—the lone returning defensive starter from last season—joined with tri-captain Brian Wannop (second career start) and junior Josh Donohue (first career start) to shut down Bucknell.
“I thought [the defense] played great,” said O’Donnell. “The shots that they gave up were all very savable.”
The starting defensemen didn’t do it alone, however, as they were aided by long-stick midfielder La Fiura, man-down defender Carpenter, and junior Andrew Salamon, who pitched in when Donohue briefly went down with a leg injury.
POWER PLAY
While only in its first game, that Harvard man-up squad was certainly in midseason form, cashing in on three of its five opportunities.
“We take a lot of pride in [our man-up offense],” Cohen said. “We feel that any time we have the extra man, we should score. We just try to stay spread.”
Much of the success of the unit can be attributed to the three sophomores who saw action while the Crimson had the extra man.
The offense was, in large part, run through Calvert, who was positioned at the top of the box in front of the goal. He was able to keep the ball moving around, and he fed sophomore midfielder Carle Stenmark for a goal early in the second half. He also ended the Bison rally in the fourth quarter when he faked a pass to move his defender, then stepped in and ripped a shot high.
Stenmark contributed the aforementioned goal, and he also posted an assist in the first quarter when he found Steve Cohen across the field. Cohen took the pass, cut towards goal, and scored the goal while heading to the turf.
Interestingly, the only quarter in which Harvard failed to convert an extra-man opportunity—the second, when it went 0-for-2—was the quarter in which the Crimson scored half of its 12 goals.
Defensively, Harvard did a good job negating Bucknell’s man-up situations, holding them to 1-for-3 for the contest.
OVERTIME
The second quarter was the only quarter in which the Crimson outscored the Bison...Harvard held Bucknell senior attackman Chris Cara to just two goals. Cara led all of Division I lacrosse in scoring last year with 38 goals, 40 assists and 78 points...With the graduation of Alex Vap ’04, sophomore midfielder John Henry Flood—who won 6-of-15 faceoffs—and junior midfielder Tom Boylan—who won 5-of-7—shared the Crimson faceoff duties.
—Staff writer Jonathan P. Hay can be reached at hay@fas.harvard.edu.