Following an 11-5 demolition of Williams on a hot Sunday afternoon, the men’s lacrosse team is back in the NESCAC semifinals for the seventh consecutive season. Wesleyan avenged a 9-5 home loss to the Ephs eight days earlier and improved to 3-0 all-time in playoff contests against Williams.

Wesleyan never trailed in Sunday’s affair, as the Cardinals jumped on the board with a four-goal first quarter. Russ Follansbee ’09, who had been held to one point in the teams’ previous meeting, put Wesleyan on the board 4:19 into the contest and added another tuck two minutes later for a 2-0 lead. Lonny Blumenthal ’10 followed with a man-up tally at 6:56, and D.J. Bernatavitz ’12 extended the Cardinals’ advantage to 4-0 three minutes later.

Williams halved the Cardinals’ deficit before the second quarter was two minutes old, but Jon Killeen ’10 responded with a pair of scores 39 seconds apart to move Wesleyan’s edge to 6-2. After Williams closed within 6-3 with just over nine and a half minutes remaining, Wesleyan fired home three straight goals off the sticks of Blumenthal, Conor Malangone ’11 (man-up), and Eddie McLaughlin ’09 for a 9-3 cushion with 4:48 to go. The teams traded goals—with Blumenthal securing a hat trick—for a 10-4 Wesleyan lead at halftime.

The second half proved a marked departure from the high-octane first stanza. After a scoreless third quarter, Wesleyan extended its lead to 11-4 3:05 into the fourth before Williams made it 11-5 two and a half minutes later. Behind 11 saves from goalkeeper Mike Borrero ’09, the Cardinals kept the Ephs off the board the rest of the way, and a pair of slashing penalties on Williams with 2:05 remaining allowed the Cardinals to end the game on the man advantage.

Statistically, the game was a drastic departure from the previous weekend’s defeat. Although Wesleyan had the same shot total in both games (37), the Cardinals put a much higher percentage of their shots in the net in the rematch. Williams goalkeeper Michael Gerbush ’09 repeated his 13-save performance from the regular-season meeting, but also gave up more than twice as many goals as in the previous game. David Hawley ’11, one of the NESCAC’s most potent scorers, had four of the Ephs’ five goals. However, Head Coach John Raba noted that the team was not worried about the Ephs’ two-headed monster of Gerbush and Hawley.

“Our game plan was to not be worried about their personnel and just come out and worry about ourselves,” Raba said. “The last time we played them, we were too focused on guys we had to stay away from and trying to create offense off of a couple of players. This game plan was, we’re going to be aggressive and attack with everybody on the field.”

“[Follansbee] was great,” Raba added. “He was the real quarterback out there, real patient with the ball…He scored a couple of goals, which was great, but he’s also a good feeder. He had three assists in the game, which was critical, since he became much more of a threat.”

Wesleyan has defeated the Ephs in the NESCAC tournament three of the past four years. In 2006, the Cardinals avenged an 11-10 overtime loss in Williamstown with a 12-5 home victory in the NESCAC quarterfinals. The teams met again in the 2007 semifinals at Tufts, with Wesleyan dominating the Ephs in an 8-0 win, to date the only shutout in NESCAC Championship history.

Overall, the Cardinals are 5-0 against Little Three opponents in postseason play, having also recorded wins over Amherst in the 2001 quarterfinals and 2005 semifinals at Middlebury. Raba attributed the Cardinals’ Little Three postseason dominance, and particularly Sunday’s game, to strong leadership from the Cardinals’ upperclassmen.

“With so many seniors, that wasn’t about to happen yesterday—that wasn’t going to be their last game,” he said.

The win was Wesleyan’s second in three days. On Friday, the Cardinals took down Connecticut College on Jackson Field by a 10-5 score, improving to 11-2 in their last 13 games against the Camels. With the teams tied 1-1 six minutes gone in the first quarter, Wesleyan scored eight of the next nine goals for a commanding 9-2 third-quarter lead. Wesleyan later led 10-3 before Connecticut added a pair of late goals for the five-goal final. The win allowed Wesleyan to secure a home first-round tournament game for the seventh straight year; Wesleyan has played its postseason opener at home all eight seasons it has qualified for the NESCAC tournament.

Wesleyan, ranked 17th nationally in the latest Division III poll, will now travel to Middlebury for a rematch with the second-ranked Panthers. Middlebury is 13-1 on the season, with its lone loss coming in Middletown by an 8-7 count on March 14. A win would all but secure an NCAA tournament berth for the Cardinals.