A week after a close defeat at the hands of Colby, the Wesleyan men’s lacrosse team traveled to Williamstown, Mass., on Saturday to take on NESCAC and Little Three foe Williams. The glorious spring weather of the preceding week had disappeared, giving way to an overcast, chilly, and wet setting as the game began. Wesleyan desperately needed a win going into the contest, sitting at 2-4 in the NESCAC, near the bottom of the standings. Unfortunately, they met a Williams team in a similar situation: the Ephs were trying to escape a logjam of teams with 3-3 NESCAC records and were just as fired up as the Cardinals. After a back-and-forth game, a valiant comeback, and an overtime period that came right down to the wire, the Ephs defeated the Cardinals 6-5.

Williams controlled the game in the first period, outshooting the Cardinals, winning more ground balls, saving more shots, and winning all three faceoffs. They capitalized on this first quarter performance, scoring two goals and shutting out the Wesleyan attack. The Cardinals began to turn things around in the second period,  however, taking twice as many shots as the Ephs and outperforming them in faceoffs and ground balls as well. But Eph goalkeeper Stephen Vrla continued his stellar performance, saving six shots in the second period alone to give him 11 saves at the half. Vrla finished the game with 19 saves, the most by a single Cardinal opponent all season. The Cardinals were only able to muster one goal in the first half, a strike by Conor Malangone ’11 with just under four minutes paused in the second period. Williams added another goal two minutes before halftime to take a 3-1 lead into the locker room.

The Ephs came back onto the field after halftime and punched Wesleyan in the mouth, scoring a goal in the first six seconds of the third period. The Cards were able to recover quickly, however, as Graham Gnall ’11 sent home a goal four minutes later, and Malangone added another before the end of the period.

The teams traded goals in the fourth quarter, and then DJ Bernatavitz ’12 finally notched the tying goal with just over two minutes left. With no scores coming in the final two minutes, the game went into a four-minute sudden-death overtime.

After a hotly contested overtime period, a dubious out-of-bounds possession call by the referee gave Williams the ball with just seconds left. The Ephs inbounded the ball, sprinted down the field, and sent home the winning goal with just seven seconds remaining in overtime, giving them their third straight regular-season victory over the Cardinals and giving Wesleyan a brutally heartbreaking loss.

The Cards never led in the game, although they held a 46-29 advantage in total shots and a 24-12 edge in shots on goal. Goalkeeper Mark Simmons ’13 stopped half of the Eph shots on goal, but he could not match the career day Vrla had for Williams. Jon Killeen ’10 had a chance to win the game on a point-blank shot in overtime, but Vrla turned it away. Killeen led the team with 11 ground balls and Malangone added an assist to his two goals.

The loss dropped the Cardinals to 6-6 and 2-5 in the NESCAC, putting the defending NESCAC champions in eighth place in the conference standings. With only two games remaining, the Cardinals will need to improve, or at the very least maintain, their eighth-place record, as only the top eight teams make the NESCAC tournament. If they have any hope of repeating their NCAA Division III tournament berth of last spring, they’ll likely need to improve their NESCAC seeding and win the postseason tournament. Wesleyan will finish both its home schedule and Little Three competition this Saturday, when they take on the visiting Amherst Lord Jeffs on Jackson Field.