On Thursday night, the Cazenovia boys lacrosse team made the short trip to Chittenango High School’s turf to take on no. 4 seed Westhill in the Section III Class C semifinals, a rematch of the tense, low-scoring April 22 contest that the Lakers pulled out, 5-4, for its closest victory of the season.
The Warriors had the exact same plan in mind for the rematch, too, and executed it well for a half – except for the problem of not getting on the scoreboard, and the Lakers would eventually take control and pull away for a 9-2 victory.
It required a lot of patience. Westhill spent much of the first quarter slowing things down, and the Lakers worked through it for more than nine minutes before Henry Mann found Jake Lewis for the game’s opening goal.
Early in the second period, Cole Willard got a goal, but for the rest of the half it was more long possessions by the Warriors and more time for the Lakers to wait them out. Cross had to make a pair of point-blank stops in order for Cazenovia to go to the break nursing a 2-0 lead.
Somewhere early in the third quarter, though, the patience ran out, and Cazenovia’s attack found its groove once more.
Alex Hunt took barely a minute to make it 3-0, and in a three-minute span, three more goals followed, as Willard and P.J. Brown took turns peppering the Warriors to make it 6-0. Then, just to be sure, Brown added two more goals in the fourth quarter, with Willard adding a goal and assist to his total.
For the night, Willard managed four goals and two assists. Brown added a three-goal hat trick, with Henry Mann producing a pair of assists and, once again, snaring most of the face-offs.
On the other end, Cross finished with seven saves, protected well as Jay Hahn, Mike Nourse, T.J. Connellan, Eli Mitchell and the rest of Cazenovia’s defense kept Westhill off the board for nearly three quarters, until the outcome was well in hand.
With Westhill cast aside, the Lakers could now look ahead to Saturday’s sectional final at the Carrier Dome against no. 7 seed Homer, which starts at 2:30.
The Trojans barely got past Watertown IHC 6-5 in the first round, but then knocked off Skaneateles (15-10) and LaFayette (14-7) in order to earn a finals berth against the same Cazenovia team it beat for the title in 2012.
