ANNAPOLIS, Md. - The 10th-ranked Navy men's lacrosse team outscored No. 4 Georgetown, 7-4, in the second half, but it was Hoyas rookie Ricky Mirabito who would play the spoiler as his crease-line goal led Georgetown to an 11-10 overtime victory against the Midshipmen Saturday evening at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. Navy sophomore midfielder Basil Daratsos (Niskayuna, N.Y.) evened the score with 38.9 seconds left in regulation, but it was not to be as the Mids dropped just their second game of the 2008 campaign, including their second overtime game against a top-six opponent.

The Hoyas opened up the game by scoring on an errant clearing pass by junior keeper Tommy Phelan (Towson, Md.). After coming up with a spot-on save against senior attack Andrew Baird, Phelan threw the ball right back into Baird's stick and easily beat Phelan to put the Hoyas up at 8:24 in the game.

In what seemed like a blink of an eye, Georgetown owned a 5-1 lead and Navy was forced to work itself out of a tough deficit against a team that handed No. 1 Duke its first loss of the year just a week earlier.

Navy, though, narrowed the lead to two when it got its first of two goals in the second stanza from an unlikely source. Just seconds after checking into the game, senior Evan Boyle (Wilbraham, Mass.) worked the backside of the cage and saw junior attack Matt Bitter (Manhasset, N.Y.), who entered the action at the same time Boyle did. Boyle fed Bitter who sank his shot from the right side door step with 9:35 remaining. A little less than eight minutes later, Navy finally got a shot off on its third extra-man attempt and this time, second-year middie Patrick Moran (Annapolis, Md.) would succeed in getting his 10-yarder from the left wing to ripple the net.

Navy won the ensuing faceoff, but it was unable to keep possession of the ball and in turning it over, Georgetown made the most of it. Scoring his second goal of the second quarter, Andrew Brancaccio curled around the left side of the cage and his underhanded sidewinder sailed it from seven yards out, giving the Hoyas a 6-3 cushion with 26.5 seconds left in the half.

Georgetown picked up where it had left off, scoring the first two goals of the third quarter and pushing its lead to five at 8-3 with 7:04 left in the quarter.

Moran, however, sparked a four-goal run by the Midshipmen by scoring back-to-back goals less than a minute apart (6:18, 5:25). Also in the mix were Nick Mirabito (Binghamton, N.Y.) from Terence Higgins (Chappaqua, N.Y.) and an incredible behind the back goal by Gregory Clement (Dallas, Texas) with 1:01 remaining in the third.

But like the second quarter, Navy was unable to keep the Hoyas under wraps and with 19.2 seconds left in the quarter, Jake Samperton put Georgetown back up by two, 9-7.

A minute and a half into the fourth quarter, Daratsos picked up a loose ball just outside of the crease and poked in his first goal since the Cornell game a month and a half ago. The two teams would fight off one another for the next 10 minutes before All-American attack Brendan Cannon came alive and scored a six-yarder from the left side of the field to give the Hoyas a two-goal advantage with 3:28 remaining.

Forty seconds later, Navy countered with Clement's second goal to get the Mids within one. Georgetown came up with the ensuing draw, but was unsuccessful in extending the lead and with under a minute to go, Navy had the ball. Daratsos took off with the ball and drilled a shot from nearly 10 yards out past Hoyas keeper Miles Kass to knot the game at 10-all.

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2008-03-29