BURLINGTON, Vt. – Tommy Burke went 19-for-26 at the faceoff-X and Michael McCormack poured in five goals as the #15/16 Vermont men's lacrosse team toughed out a 14-9 victory over visiting Hartford Saturday at Virtue Field.
 
Vermont moves to 4-2 overall and 4-0 in America East play while Hartford falls to 0-4 – all in league action.
 
RELATED LINKS
Box Score | Box Score (pdf.)
CatamounTV Highlights
 
COACH'S QUOTE

"It all starts at the faceoff-X and I thought Tommy Burke was phenomenal today," head coach Chris Feifs said. "Credit to Hartford's goalie who had 18 saves today but you just have to trust that your practice will pay off and trust your players that the looks would start falling. I thought we just kept the pressure on them and eventually things started to go our way."

HOW IT HAPPENED

• There wasn't much in the way of offense during the first 15 minutes as both goalies stood tall. Ryan Cornel made four of his nine saves in the first quarter while Cam Logan made five.
• Hartford took a 4-3 lead at the 11:10 mark of the second quarter on a goal from Ethan Landymore (3G, 1A)
• Tommy Burke won the ensuing faceoff and picked out the bottom left corner on Logan to tie things up at four.
• Thomas McConvey (2G, 1A) and Liam Limoges scored on back-to-back possessions at the tail end of the second frame to give the Cats a 6-4 lead at the break.
• JJ Levandowski (2G) scored on two straight possessions for UVM – both left-handed lasers from the top of the box. The second of which put Vermont ahead 10-6 late in the third.
• Hartford scored three of the first four goals in the fourth quarter to make it 11-9 with under six minutes to play.
• McCormack (5G, 1A) took over after that, however. The big lefty scored once on a high bounce shot from the right wing before he uncorked a low drive from the top of the key on a nice feed from McConvey to ice it.

 
INSIDE THE BOX SCORE

• David Closterman scored a hat trick for the second straight game and also chipped in an assist.
• Burke won 13-of-15 faceoffs in the second half to bolster his 73-percent afternoon at X.
• UVM went a perfect 21-for-21 clearing the ball – the first time that has happened this season and first time since Feb. 2019 against Utah (14-for14).
• Vermont is now 13-1 at Virtue Field over the last four seasons.
• Saturday was Military Appreciation Day presented by Milton Cat. Please consider showing your support by donating to the Josh Pallotta Fund by visiting JoshPallottaFund.org. Donations directly support veterans in our local community. The Josh Pallotta Fund was created by a group of Veterans, family, and community members in memory of Joshua R. Pallotta. It is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Veterans and Service Members by combining local and national resources, emergency services, and research to provide Veterans the resiliency, transition and reintegration tools to help them sustain or return to full and healthy lives. Thank you to our service members that continue to protect and serve our community.

WHO'S NEXT

Next up for the Cats is a rematch of the 2019 America East title game April 3 at UMBC. Faceoff against the Retrievers is set for 11 a.m.