The No. 3 Cornell men’s lacrosse team took down the University of Virginia, No. 8, on Saturday in a tight game that came down to one goal. This win gave the Red its fifth consecutive win since the beginning of the season. “It starts with the senior class. They are doing a great job at keeping everyone focused,” senior attack Rob Pannell said. “With 16 seniors in the class, having everybody on board is very important.”This victory is the first time, since 2007, that Cornell has come into the season with five straight wins.“I think that our team chemistry is really working. With 16 seniors, they really lead the charge,” freshman attack Sean Doyle said. “They are really good at relaying to the underclassmen what being a Cornell lacrosse player means.”The goal against UVA came with 13 seconds left as senior attack Steve Mock received a pass from Pannell to put the ball in the back of the net and take down the Cavaliers, 12-11. “We have a lot of veteran guys on our squad. With guys like Rob Pannell and Steve Mock, obviously you know you can rely on them at a time like that,” sophomore midfielder Connor Buczek said. “They came up huge to score with 13 seconds left to give us the ‘W.”The goal for the Red endewas the first time that head coach Ben DeLuca won against the Cavaliers in his Cornell career.“This is a character-building win,” DeLuca said in a statement. “I’m very proud of how our guys handled this game and it’s a credit to our captains and our seniors. We’ve had a tough stretch, with this being our fifth game in 13 days, and we had to work extremely hard to get this win.”Pannell finished the game against UVA with a total of two goals and four assists, which helped him win the Ivy League Player of the Week this week for the second time so far this season. “[The Ivy honor] says a lot about our team. Personally, I have put a lot of hard work into it but at the end of the day, it has to do with team success,” Pannell said.Over the course of the two games – one against Virginia and one against Canisius College – Pannell became the all-time career assist leader in Cornell history, passing Eamon McEneaney ’77. Pannell has been named Ivy Player of the Week eight times during his career on the Hill and is third in the League for points at 286 and assists at 168.Senior midfielder Connor English – a former Cavalier – grabbed three goals from his old teammates while Mock and senior midfielder Max Van Bourgondien snatched two goals and an assist each in the game. To round out the crew, sophomore midfielder Connor Buczek knocked in one goal and got an assist, while sophomore midfielder John Hogan picked up one for the day.“We didn’t play our best lacrosse … We certainly made a lot of mistakes. We were down by five in to the third quarter. Coach called a timeout and said guys we are going to see what we are made of,” Pannell said. “We just slowly brought ourselves back in the game … Next thing you know, we won. It says a lot about our senior class, keeping everyone focused and composed.”“I think we did a very good job of pulling together as a team [in the end]. Persevering through some diversity in that one,” Buczek said. “We really had to pull together as a team [at UVA] and I think that everybody did a great job really trusting one another, believing in the system and taking it one goal at a time.”Cornell will begin Ivy play this weekend when it heads to Yale on Saturday, to face off against the Bulldogs at 1 p.m.“This game [against Yale] for the entire team is just about redemption and getting another shot,” Doyle said.
Original Author: Haley Velasco