PHILADELPHIA – Marred by eight unanswered goals spanning between the end of the first and the entire second quarter, a late second-half surge wasn't enough as #10/14 Duke took down the #8/7 University of Pennsylvania men's lacrosse team Saturday afternoon down at Ace Adams Field at Penn Park.
 
Penn scored the first two goals of the contest to take an early 2-0 lead, but found themselves in an 8-3 hole heading into halftime. The Quakers rallied back in the second half and got as close as two away from the lead, but the Blue Devils held on for the victory.
 
Penn drops its first game of the 2023 season and falls to 1-1, while Duke improves to 4-1 and earns its second ranked win of the campaign so far.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn's loss to Duke is its first since 2019 and its first against the Blue Devils at home in the series history.
 
*Cam Rubin notched a hat trick for the second straight game, scoring a team-high tying three goals to go along with his two assists for five points.
 
*Dylan Gergar also recorded a hat trick and an assist for four points.
 
*Gergar's three goals puts him at 99 for his career, now just one away from becoming the seventh player in program history to record at least 100 career goals.
 
*Eight different players record 12 goals in the defeat with a first-career goal for Casey Mulligan.
 
*Three players record a pair of assists (Rubin, Sam Handley and Tynan Walsh).
 
*Handley extends his point streak to 35 straight games with his one goal and two assists.
 
*Gergar brought his goal-scoring streak to 25 straight games, also extending his point streak to 25 as well.
 
*Chris Arceri led Penn with seven groundballs, mostly by way of his 11 faceoff wins in 29 tries. Gergar had four GBs, with Handley, Furey and Edward Arnold each tallying three apiece. Arceri also finished with two caused turnovers to lead the team.
 
*Emmet Carroll made 10 saves between the pipes, but allowed 14 goals. For Duke, William Helm stopped 19 shots.
 
*Penn out-shot Duke, 56-37 and in shots on goal, 31-24. The Blue Devils had 13 turnovers to the Quakers' 10, while Penn was successful on 16 of its 17 clears.
 
*The Quakers were 1-of-2 on extra man opportunities, Duke 0-for-1.
 
*The Blue Devils were excellent in the circle going 18-for-29 on faceoffs.
 
*Andrew McAdorey and Dyson Williams each tallied three goals to lead Duke, while Brennan O'Neill had a pair of scores and three assists for five points.
 
How It Happened
Dylan Gergar scored first for the Quakers on a give-and-go from Ben Smith, which was followed up by Gabe Furey's score from Gergar with 9:58 left as the Quakers went out in front, 2-0.
 
Duke then scored eight in row from the five-minute mark of the first quarter to the 1:19 mark of the second to lead 8-2.
 
James Shipley ended the Blue Devils' scoring run with a goal to beat the buzzer off the assist from Cam Rubin, as Penn trimmed the deficit down to 8-3 heading into the locker room.
 
Ryan Mackenzie and Dyson Williams scored the first two goals of the second half for Duke to take a 10-3 lead and that was when Penn started to make the trek back from being down, scoring four in a row starting with a man-up strike from Gergar, assisted by Sam Handley.
 
Handley then got on the scoreboard himself with an unassisted goal, followed by tallies from Casey Mulligan and Piper Bond as the Quakers chipped away at the Duke lead, now trailing 10-7 with 1:21 to play in the third.
 
Duke and Penn traded blows to open the fourth quarter with the Blue Devils extending the lead back to 12-8 with 13:36 to play.
 
Nearly four minutes came off the clock when Tynan Walsh put away a shot from Rubin and Gergar scored off the feed from Gabe Furey, now down 12-10 with 9:03 to go.
 
After Brennan O'Neill scored unassisted with 8:20 left, Rubin answered with his second of the game, an absolute rocket from Handley's behind-the-net pass, to trim it back to 13-11 with 5:35 left.
 
Aidan Danenza scored with 4:28 remaining to create separation for the Blue Devils late with a score making it 14-11, as Rubin put away his third of the day off the dish from Walsh to get back to 14-12.
 
Duke's defense was stellar in the final two minutes of the contest, holding down the fort for the two-goal road win.
 
Up Next
Penn will look to rebound next weekend with a road test at Penn State at 3 p.m. in University Park. The Nittany Lions (3-1) knocked off #7/5 Yale in New Haven on Saturday, 13-11.