LANCASTER, Pa. – The Ursinus College men's lacrosse team had little trouble scoring on Saturday night, but the Bears had no answer for Franklin & Marshall's two-headed monster and fell on the short side of a 17-13 Centennial Conference shootout.
Kevin Mollihan went off for six goals and two assists and Sean Rogers put up four goals and four assists for the 17th-ranked Diplomats (10-2, 5-0), who closed the first half on a 4-0 run and never looked back in stretching their winning streak to ten.
Junior Ian Desenberg registered three goals and an assist for No. 16 Ursinus (8-3, 3-2), which got two goals and two helpers each from sophomore Peter DeSimone and freshman Bobby McClure.
Franklin & Marshall gained the inside track to hosting the CC championship, while Ursinus fell into a fourth-place tie with Washington College.
The Bears held a 5-4 lead on McClure's man-up tally from DeSimone, who had scored the tying goal a few minutes earlier on a feed from Desenberg. Rogers tied it at 5 with 4:57 to go, and the junior's next tally gave the home side the lead for good with 1:40 to go. It also kick-started a stretch of three goals in the final 100 seconds of the half that sent the Diplomats into the break with an 8-5 advantage; Mollihan set up John Sommi eight seconds after Rogers' tally, then scored himself with 22 seconds showing.
Franklin & Marshall got goals from five different players in the third quarter, with George Briggs' extra-man conversion swelling the margin to 13-7 heading into the fourth.
Trailing 14-8, Ursinus made one last push. The Bears reeled off three in a row, two of them from Desenberg, to pull within three with just over 10 minutes remaining. But Mollihan put the brakes on the would-be rally with three consecutive markers to help the Diplomats pull away.
Franklin & Marshall owned a 51-34 advantage in shots, including a 28-14 discrepancy in the first half, and picked up 37 ground balls to the Bears' 30. Ursinus won the face-off battle, 18-16, thanks to a 13-for-20 outing from sophomore Brian Casey, who picked up six ground balls.
Junior Gerard Brown had a goal and two assists for the Bears, and classmate Lou Harrison added a goal and an assist. Senior Matthew Cioeta netted a goal and recorded three ground balls, becoming the seventh player in program history to reach 150 for his career.
In addition to big games from Mollihan and Rogers, the Diplomats got complementary performances from Tucker McBride (two goals, three assists), Mike Rama (two goals), Sommi (two goals), and Briggs (one goal, two assists).
Sophomore Elliott Shevitz collected ten saves for Ursinus. Scott Hatch made seven for Franklin & Marshall.
The men's lacrosse team hosts Haverford on Saturday, April 22.