Mustangs Open League with a BANG. Beat Cal 16-8
On a rainy day in San Luis Obispo the Cal Poly Men Lacrosse team rolled to a 5-1 record with their 16-8 victory over WCLL opponent; the visiting UC Berkeley Bears.
The Mustangs scored early and often then held off a third quarter surge to put the Bears away in the fourth quarter.
The scoring started at 12:50 in the first when sophomore Ben Berkow (#5) fed fellow sophomore Andrew Laron (#22) for the score. This was followed less than 2 minutes later when Cal Poly went man up and freshman AJ Guralas (#3) got the assist with a pass to the wing where freshman Tucker Reed sent a laser into the top corner to take a 2-0 lead for the Mustangs
The Bears scored a minute later to make it 2-1. At 9:53; #30 junior attackman Matthew Paul (2 goals) took it the ball in transition and finished off a solo goal. With just under 5 minutes Loran hit the back of the net again with an assist from #18 Freshman Mitch Stickney. The first scoring concluded with a goal from Paul again as well as stinger to the top of the net from #5 Ben Berkow. End of the first quarter Cal Poly was cruising at 6-2.
The second and third quarters were hard fought as Cal Poly scored two more goals in the second. One by #5 Ben Bercow (3 goals and 1 assist) and another by #3 AJ Guralas ( 5 goals and 1 assist) only to be matched by two from Cal leaving it 8-4 at half time.
The third quarter started quickly for the Mustangs with a quick goal from Berkow followed by another unassisted goal by Mitch Stickney (1 goal, 1 assist) to give Cal Poly a 10-4 lead. However Cal was not done as Cal scored the next three straight to tighten up the game at 10-7. AJ Guralas added one of his 5 goals to keep the lead at 4 for Cal Poly 11-7.
The fourth quarter was all Mustangs with the highlights being a spectacular one handed goal by AJ Guralas with 11:21 in the fourth off a feed by #22 Andrew Laron and a “coast to coast” clear off a steal from Chris Yoshida that ended with a great shot and goal. Adding goals in the fourth were Guralas (3 in the 4th quarter) and #27 Evan Hunter (1 goal, 1 assist). Cal could only muster a single goal in the last stanza to make it a 16-8 Cal Poly win.
After the game Coach Dabrieo had this comment “Good win for the program, it’s always nice to win league games. We beat a well-coached, scrappy Cal team that made us earn it. Offensively, we've struggled in the first half of games this season so it was nice to score 6 in the first quarter. I think this should give our team more confidence that we have the potential to win both high scoring and low scoring games. Hopefully we can build off of this performance with two tough teams coming into town next weekend.”
Cal Poly Plays league rival Santa Clara next Saturday at 1:00 PM