Pride offense stays hot in road victory at Northland
ASHLAND, Wis. - Heading near the northern-most part of Wisconsin, the Clarke University men's lacrosse team scored a season-high 23 goals in a 23-7 non-conference victory over Northland College on Monday afternoon.
The Pride and Jacks played to a fairly tight first half as CU only ever trailed at 1-0 after the first goal of the game but they also never had a two-goal lead for a little under five minutes of the first quarter as the two teams traded scores outside of Clarke's back-to-back goals in the middle of the first quarter to take the 1-1 tie and go up 3-1.
Clarke would take a one-goal lead into halftime at 8-7 following Isaac Margala's lone goal of the game with just over a minute remaining in the half as that would start a 16-0 scoring run for the Pride as they would go on to outscore Northland 15-0 in the second half.
In that second half, CU would win all 15 faceoff chances and goalie Jack Fritz would sub in to make all three saves he needed to in the final 30 minutes for Clarke to produce five goals in the third to extend their lead to 13-7 before a 10-goal outburst in the fourth behind all but one goal coming from either Moran or Henry La Belle in the fourth.
La Belle continued to show his knack for finding the back of the net, scoring a new career-high nine goals just two days after setting that previous career-high with an eight-goal performance at home against Ottawa University on Saturday as he added three assists for a 12-point day.
Moran also set new career-highs as the freshman from Cloquet, Minn. scored six goals and added five assists for an 11-point game of his own with Justyse White scoring three goals, Aiden Gudenkauf producing two goals and an assist, Matt Archer getting a goal and two assists, Xavier Howard and Margala both finishing with a goal and an assist, Doug Powless producing two assists, then Dominick Knazur, Abraham Agundez, and Tanner Gell all added an assist for the Pride.
Primary faceoff takers Agundez and Josh Pote combined to go 24-for-31 at the dot while Powless also took a draw and won it on his only chance with Jake Weller getting his second-straight start in net to play the first half and make four saves on 11 shots on goal against, picking up his second-straight win.
Clarke men's lacrosse will get back to Heart of America Athletic Conference play with their final road trip of the regular season starting with a Thursday night game against Benedictine College for a 6:00 p.m. CT scheduled opening faceoff between the Pride and Ravens.