Box Score
MEDFORD - Finishing a dominating weekend at the 2015 NESCAC Championship, the Tufts men's lacrosse team won its sixth straight conference title with a 16-4 victory over host Amherst College in the final on Sunday afternoon.
Tufts, seeded second, had earned a berth into the final for the eighth time with a 23-9 victory over #3 seed Middlebury in the semi-finals on Saturday. Today they opened a 10-1 lead and never looked back to rout a top-seeded Amherst squad which beat defeated the Jumbos 12-6 two weeks ago during the regular season.
Nine different players scored goals as Tufts (16-2) earned NESCAC's automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament. The full NCAA field will be announced tonight at 9 pm. The Jumbos are the defending NCAA champions.
Junior John Uppgren's four goals and an assist for five points led Tufts offensively. Senior Peter Gill added three goals while junior Garrett Clarke and Ben Andreycak each had two goals with an assist.
Junior Alex Salazar was brilliant in goal with 18 saves while allowing just three Amherst tallies in 58:22 of action. Classmate Conor Helfrich was a catalyst one again winning 17 of 21 face-offs. He was seven for seven in the first quarter.
Amherst (16-2), led by three goals from Chris Albanese, will await a likely at-large berth into the NCAA Tournament.
Andreycak, Uppgren, Gill and senior co-captain Cole Bailey scored to put Tufts up 4-0 nine minutes into the game. Amherst scored what would be their only goal of the first 40 minutes of play when Albanese converted a pass from Quinn Maroney at 5:42 of the first making it 4-1.
Leading 5-1 at the end of one, the Jumbos added four more in the second quarter. Again, every goal was scored by someone different with junior Austin Carbone passing for two assists. Salazar made seven saves while Tufts held Amherst without a goal in the second quarter.
Tufts was up 10-1 after Clarke's goal opened the second-half scoring before Max Keeley scored at the five-minute mark of the third quarter for the Lord Jeffs. That ended a scoreless stretch of more than 30 minutes by the hosts.
However, Tufts muted any potential momentum by scoring the next four including a goal and an assist by Uppgren for a 14-2 lead early in the fourth. The teams each scored twice in the final eight minutes for the 16-4 final.
Carbone, Kyle Howard-Johnson, CJ Higgins and Chris Sawyer also contributed goals for the Jumbos. Senior Jeff Chang and sophomore Blake Wood both caused two turnovers. Defenders Chang, Tyler Carbone and Tyler Olney finished with three groundballs.
Moroney added two assists for Amherst. Kevin Curry, Matt Virgilio and Ryan Cassidy all caused two turnovers, with Cassidy coming up with five groundballs. Cody Tranberger started in goal and made 17 saves in 57-plus minutes.
Tufts, who has won 18 straight NESCAC Championship tournament games, posted a 55-44 advantage in shots. Groundballs were even at 39 apiece.
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