BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Lehigh continued its hometown magic over Colgate and eliminated the Raiders from the Patriot League Men's Lacrosse Tournament.
 
The Mountain Hawks held the Raiders to their lowest scoring output of the season in an 11-6 decision. Winning for the fifth time in a row at home against Colgate, Lehigh advances to take on Navy in Friday's semifinals in Baltimore. Colgate gets ready for a May 5 nonconference matchup at Syracuse.
 
All-Patriot League First Team attackman Andrew Pettit scored five goals for Lehigh to boost his season total to 39. Three of those came in the first half to help the hosts build a 6-1 lead by intermission.
 
Lehigh scored goals with four seconds left in the first quarter and seven seconds left in the second quarter to punctuate that 6-1 halftime margin.
 
Matt Donovan led the Raiders with two goals and an assist. He scored Colgate's lone tally in the first half and then scored again with 4:37 remaining to spark a late three-goal flurry.
 
James Caddigan Jr., and Will Blumenberg scored 11 seconds apart midway in the third quarter, and then Chase Wittich and Joe Delaney followed Donovan's lead in the late-going to narrow the final margin.
 
Sam Cleveland set up the Wittich goal to reach 30 assists for the season and move into a three-way tie for fifth on the all-time Colgate chart, joining Peter Baum (2012) and Matt Clarkson (2015). Cleveland is now four assists shy of the season record of 34 set by Brian Kopp in 1985.
 
Will Blumenberg, Parker Baddley and Connor Mullen all grabbed five ground balls apiece to help the Raiders to a 36-26 edge in that category.
 
Lehigh was 1-of-2 on man-up situations, improving their season mark to 25-of-38 for a nation's-best 65.8 percent.
 
Bottom Line
Lehigh 11, Colgate 6
 
Won-Lost Records
• Colgate is now 7-7 overall.
• Lehigh improved to 9-6.
 
Raider Facts & Figures
• The top five in Colgate season assists are now: Kopp 34, Rob Low (1993) 33, Bob Woodruff (1983) 32, followed by Baum, Clarkson and Cleveland at 30.
• Donovan led the team in points for the second game this season, with both times coming against Lehigh.
• Collin Orr won 8-of-16 faceoff attempts.
• The Mountain Hawks have won eight of the last nine in this series.
• After Lehigh scored the game's first three goals, the Mountain Hawks added four straight goals for a 7-1 lead and four straight for 11-3.
• Colgate's previous season-low scoring totals came in a 10-7 loss at Lehigh and an 11-7 home loss to Loyola.
• Colgate's most recent win in Bethlehem was 11-8 back in 2011.
 
From the Source
• Colgate head coach Mike Murphy: (On the game) "The better team won tonight; all the credit goes to Lehigh. I like the way that we prepared, I like the effort we got. But at this time of the year, when you're in playoff mode and you're in games like this, your imperfections show. Some of our imperfections showed, some of our indecision against the zone – we missed a handful of opportunities.
 
"But I liked my team's effort. I like that we fought for 60 minutes. It may not have been great execution, but I'm proud of our effort."
 
(On the season) "After a couple of years of being outside the Patriot League (tournament), we took a major step forward and you can credit our seniors for that. Our younger three classes have to realize and use the pain they feel right now as motivation moving forward."
 
Listen to the rest of Coach Murphy's comments HERE.
 
Up Next
• Colgate wraps up its 2018 season May 5 at Syracuse.
• The Orange are 7-5 overall heading into this weekend's ACC tournament.
• Faceoff from Syracuse is 2 p.m., with ACC Network Extra carrying all the action.