LEXINGTON, Va. – The Washington and Lee men's lacrosse team posted a 22-8 win over Shenandoah in the ODAC Quarterfinals on Tuesday evening to give head coach
Gene McCabe his 200th win in the Blue and White.
McCabe's 200th win comes in his 298th game at the helm of the W&L men's lacrosse program for a .671 winning percentage. Just two weeks ago, McCabe earned his 250th career coaching win when the Generals defeated Roanoke, 16-12, on April 18. McCabe now has a total 254-116 (.686) winning percentage across 22 seasons as a head coach.
The Generals (14-4) wasted little time in stacking their lead early in the contest with six first-quarter goals and the first 11 of the game across 21 minutes of play. Sophomore
Hillis Burns (Louisville, Ky. / St. Xavier) scored three of the team's first four goals, and he led the early scoring with four scores within the team's first 11 goals. The other seven goals in that stretch came from six different players, with junior
Alex Brown (Norwalk, Conn. / Taft School) leading with two.
Shenandoah's (9-10) Robert Harvey scored the Hornets' first goal with 8:03 left in the second quarter, but the team was unable to cut further into the W&L lead for the remainder of the game. The Generals led by at least 10 goals from that point on, with the largest lead coming at 17-3 in the third quarter and the final tally of 22-8.
The Generals received balanced scoring across their second helping of 11 goals in the game, as 10 different players logged a goal, with the lone multi-goal scorer being first-year
A.J. Levitt (Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. / The Benjamin School).
The balanced team-scoring allowed the Generals to break the single-season program record for goals scored in a season. W&L has now scored 332 goals in 2023 to surpass the 2019 team's output of 329, and the Generals own the sixth-best scoring average (18.44) in Division III.
Burns finished with a team-high five points, which came on four goals and an assist, while senior
Hudson Pokorny (Darien, Conn. / Darien) posted two goals and two assists. With his four points, Pokorny became just the second player in program history to reach 90 points in a season (39g, 51a), and he only needs two more to break A.J. Witherell's '19 program record of 91 set in 2018.
Brown and sophomore
Joey Allen (Berwyn, Pa. / Conestoga) came in next with three points each, as W&L had 21 different point scorers in the game.
Senior
Matt Gallagher (Lynchburg, Va. / E.C. Glass) and juniors
Will Bou (Chevy Chase, Md. / Landon) and
Nick Tussing (Owings Mills, Md. / Gilman) had another strong day on face-offs, combining to win 28-of-34 (.824). Bou led the trio in wins (12) and percentage (.923), while Gallagher (8-11) and Tussing (8-10) each won eight attempts.
Sophomore
Brian Barringer (Sudbury, Mass. / Lincoln Sudbury Regional) led W&L with seven ground balls and 11 different Generals caused one turnover each. In goal, senior
Warren Seeds (Atlanta, Ga. / Westminster) earned the win after he saved 8-of-11 shots in 33:30 of action. First-year
Ryan Boyd (Chatham, N.J. / Chatham) entered in the third quarter and made five saves in 17:21, followed by one stop from junior
Ryan Aljader (Levittown, N.Y. / Chaminade) across the final 9:09.
Shenandoah's Stephen Graham led the team with three points, all coming on assists, while Tyler Held led the offense with two goals. Taylor Wright added two points and two ground balls to the mix, and Robert Harvey scored once and scooped up five ground balls. Mark Isabelle was tagged with the loss between the pipes after he made 11 saves in the game.
W&L doubled up Shenandoah in ground balls (50-25) and outshot the Hornets by a final 52-42 total. The Hornets won the turnover battle, however, committing 16 and forcing 21.
The Generals will travel to Hampden-Sydney for the ODAC Semifinals on Thursday at 4:00 pm, in a rematch of a four-OT contest on March 29 that favored the Tigers.
