On Saturday afternoon, the Quinnipiac Bobcats defeated the Virginia Military Institute Keydets 13-12, as they celebrated their nine graduating seniors.
The Bobcats looked strong early as they opened the scoring after Jake Tellers scored off a rebound, capping almost two minutes of possession for the Bobcats.
This fast start may have come from some added motivation to the Keydets coming out during the senior ceremony waving the United States flag.
“Of course,” said Steven Germain. “ I mean, yeah, we saw it and that fired us up a little bit. A little disrespectful.”
VMI was able to respond when they scored back-to-back goals from AJ Stamos and Wil Duffy.
The two teams traded goals for the rest of the quarter as the Keydets led 4-3 after the first.
The second quarter was all Quinnipiac as they outscored VMI 6-0 and went into the half with a 9-4 lead.
“The past few games where we have struggled has really been possession. It’s really been a struggle in the dot, trouble making stops, in that second quarter we were able to,” said head coach Mason Poli. “It’s fun when the ball hits the back of the net like that”.
The offense in the quarter was spearheaded by Dylan Donnery who got a hattrick in the quarter and Trevor Douglas added a pair of goals himself.
Douglas’s second goal was all the rave as he was able to finish by shooting behind his head, something to keep an eye out for in SportsCenter’s Top 10 Plays.
This was truly a back-and-forth affair as the Bobcats dominated the second quarter. The Keydets responded by dominating the third quarter.
A pair of Stamos and Austin English goals allowed the Keydets to close the gap and make it a 9-8 game before Germain netted his second of the game with 13 seconds remaining to extend the lead to 10-8 heading into the final frame.
When the fourth quarter started, in the blink of an eye, the game was tied as the Keydets came out firing. They scored two goals in the first 29 seconds of the quarter, shocking the crowd and the Bobcats.
The two teams traded a goal each, but VMI pulled off a miraculous goal when leading point scorer Luke Rusterucci had a behind-back pass to English who deked Mason Oak and buried the shot to give the Keydets a 12-11 lead.
The Bobcats wasted no time coming back and scoring a pair of goals as Douglas tied the game at 12 and then Donnery’s fifth goal of the game with 4:08 remaining gave the Bobcats the lead for good.
Donnery, a senior on the team, has been able to impact the culture of the program on and off the field.
“I mean, just bottom up all buy-in, that’s all,” said Donnery. “The freshmen coming in, to get buy-in from everybody, that is something we’ve implemented.”
The Bobcats will look to continue their momentum when they travel to Long Island to take on LIU next Saturday at 2 p.m.
