The BYU men’s lacrosse team beat Oregon State 7-5 to advance to the quarterfinals of the national tournament on Monday night in Irvine, California.
Ranked No. 5 in the tournament, BYU came into the national tournament as the lowest ranked RMLC tournament winner ever.
BYU started the game off by using a lot of the field in their sets, but the Beavers had a lot of strong defensive stops.
The Beavers scored the first goal and took a 1-0 lead just 34 seconds into the game.
Chase Miller of BYU scored his thirteenth goal of the year at the 9:38 mark of the first quarter to even the score up at 1-1.
Oregon Sate regained the lead by scoring for the second time at the 6:45 mark of the first quarter.
After being active throughout the first quarter, the Cougar’s Andrew Bertha scored his first goal of the game at the 1:35 mark leaving the game tied 2-2 to end the first quarter.
In the second quarter, the Beavers continued to double BYU in order to contain the play-making abilities of the Cougars. Oregon State specifically made an effort to double BYU’s Chris Severson to prevent him from making plays.
This worked well for Oregon State who scored around the 10 minute mark giving themselves the 3-2 lead. Despite having three shots hit the crossbar, BYU could not score again in the half. The Cougars went into the half down one.
“I think right now, our objective really is going to be just what we can do offensively to actually just open up the field a little bit,” BYU head coach Matt Schneck said during the online broadcast. “We’ve been trying to cram too many things into the crease, we’re hoping to open it up, trying to start working things a little bit better on the off side.”
BYU came out aggressive in the second half. Zach Labrum scored their third goal of the game off of an assist from Jack Fabrizio, tying the game at 3-3. BYU continued to be aggressive and execute their passing game.
BYU star freshman Severson scored his first goal of the game with 12:36 left in the third quarter, giving the Cougars a 4-3 lead.
Chase Miller jumped in the air to score a goal with 5:27 left putting BYU up by two.
Severson scored his second goal of the game, giving BYU the 6-3 lead. BYU maintained control of the game throughout the third quarter, finishing the quarter up 6-3.
Oregon State went into the fourth quarter focusing on cutting off the middle and taking better care of the ball.
The Beavers scored with 12:09 left in the fourth cutting the Cougar’s lead to two. Oregon State scored again at the 9:32 mark making the score 6-5 for BYU.
Severson put the game away by scoring with just 1:54 left in the game, giving the Cougars the lead, and giving Severson a hat trick.
The Cougar’s big second half and timely scores helped BYU win the game 7-5.
BYU will play Georgia Tech tomorrow at 7:45 MDT in the quarterfinals. The game will be streamed live on mcla.us.
