HANOVER, N.H. – The University of Pennsylvania men's lacrosse team did what it needed to on Saturday, using a five-goal run bridging the third and fourth quarters to break an 8-8 deadlock and post a 16-12 victory over Dartmouth.
 
Penn improved to 6-4 and completed Ivy League play with a 3-3 record, while Dartmouth fell to 4-8 and remains winless in Ivy play at 0-5. The game closed out another crazy day of Ivy League men's lacrosse, a day that ended with five teams ahead of Penn but tied atop the standings at 3-2.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Dylan Gergar tied his season/career high with six goals on Saturday, three in the first quarter and three in the fourth. It's his second six-goal game this season and the third of his career.
 
*Gergar has now scored at least three goals in each of Penn's last three games and has six such games overall this season.
 
*Sam Handley nearly met both of his Ivy League averages with three goals and two assists for five points.
 
*Ben Smith scored a pair of goals, his first multi-goal game as a Quaker. In fact, he doubled his output for the season on Saturday.
 
*Penn's other goal scorers were Ben Bedard, Piper Bond, Gabe Furey, James Shipley and Tynan Walsh. For Bond and Walsh it was their second goals this season.
 
*At the other end, Patrick Burkinshaw had 12 saves on a day when Dartmouth outshot Penn, 42-33.
 
*Penn struggled on the face-off X, winning just nine of 31 draws and going 0-8 in the fourth quarter.
 
How It Happened
Gergar got the Quakers started, scoring a pair of goals 1:45 apart early in the contest. Dartmouth got one of those back, but Handley made it 3-1 when he took a Rubin pass through traffic and rifled one home into the upper corner.  Handley then fed Smith on the doorstep for an extra-man goal to make it 4-1, and Gergar completed his hat trick before the first quarter was over to give Penn a 5-1 lead after one.
 
Furey opened the second-quarter scoring, taking a feed in front, beating a man and firing one into the lower corner. Dartmouth ended a scoreless streak of more than 15 minutes to snap Penn's four-goal run and turned it into its own three-goal run, the third coming in an extra-man situation. The Quakers used some tic-tac-toe passing in transition to make it another three-goal game, Walsh finishing the series on the doorstep. Handley then responded to another Big Green goal, and Penn's lead was 8-5 at the half.
 
Dartmouth came out strong in the third quarter, scoring three in a row—the second and third scored just 53 seconds apart—to draw level at 8-8. However, Penn responded with four in a row—the first three coming in a span of 1:07—to take a 12-8 lead after three. Shipley started the run when he received a pass, spun to avoid a defender, then went low. Bedard finished a Handley feed shortly after that, and then a huge boost came when Farrare and Bond combined off a faceoff to make it 11-8. Handley tallied in the final minute.
 
Gergar netted his fourth of the day to make it a five-goal run less than a minute into the fourth, but Dartmouth responded with the next two goals to get within three, but the Big Green were called for a penalty and Gergar quickly made them pay to make it 14-10. The senior then used great hustle to come up with a ground ball behind the goal, then outraced defenders to the front and dove into a goal-scoring opportunity for his sixth of the day.
 
Dartmouth made things a bit nervy down the stretch, scoring a pair of goals 26 seconds apart with less than three minutes to play, but the Quakers survived a few more Big Green possessions and then Smith closed things out in the final seconds.
 
Up Next
Penn ends the season with a pair of non-conference games next week, starting Tuesday when the Quakers host city rival Saint Joseph's at Penn Park. Faceoff with the 20th-ranked Hawks is scheduled for 7 p.m.