by Chris Detwiler
LIU Post sophomore Will Snelders and freshman Jake Gillis both scored five goals in the team’s 17-7 win over Molloy College on Saturday March 30. Snelders’s five goals tie his season high.
“Basically, everyone else does the work,” Snelders said. “We just finish it off for everyone.”
Gillis recorded his eighth hat trick of the season and sixth in a row.
“Everybody is contributing,” Gillis said. “We end up with the goals, but everyone is doing their job.”
The duo has combined for nearly half of the teams goals this season, scoring 72 of the team’s 147 goals in 2019.
“Those two just have a connection,” said LIU Post head coach Eric Wolf. “It’s hard to describe because they play so well together. They know how to play off each other.”
“We’re big guys but we’re very different players,” Gillis said. “I think that works very well for us.”
Senior Bryan Ochs started in net for the Pioneers, recording 10 saves in the win.
The fifth-ranked team in NCAA Division II men’s lacrosse continued their exceptional offensive production. The team has scored in double digits in eight of their nine games this season.
“We’re getting progressively better,” Wolf said. “I think as we put in a little more structure, we’re starting to get the shots that we want.”
Molloy was led by junior Kevin Pastier who scored three goals in the loss, his third hat trick of the season.
Faceoffs were a huge aspect of the dominant victory for the Pioneers as they won 25 of the 27 faceoffs. Senior Connor Farrell, who was recently drafted by the New York Lizards of Major League Lacrosse, won all 22 faceoffs he competed for.
With the win, LIU Post stays undefeated in East Coast Conference (ECC) play. The Pioneers currently sit in second place behind Mercy College, who is also undefeated in conference play and holds an unblemished overall record.
“We’re right where we want to be,” Wolf said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done. We just need to take care of business and I think we’re going to like the results that we’re going to get.”
“We just have to keep going,” Snelders said. “We have the goal of winning the national championship.”
The Pioneers (7-2, 3-0) dominated from the opening faceoff, scoring two goals in the first three minutes of the game and never looked back.
After a nearly six-minute scoring drought by both teams, Molloy (3-6, 0-2) put one in the back of the net to bring themselves within a goal, but that didn’t last long as Snelders scored his second of the game two and a half minutes later.
That seemed to wake the beast that is the Pioneers’ offense as LIU Post went on a 4-0 run in the next six minutes, including another goal from Snelders and two goals from Gillis.
LIU Post and Molloy went back-and-forth to end the second quarter. The Pioneers jogged to the locker room with a 9-3 lead.
The second half was a lot of the same.
The last 11 minutes of the third quarter were dominated by LIU Post. The Pioneers scored five goals in that span, including four in the last three minutes of the quarter, and held an insurmountable 15-5 lead heading into the final frame.
The fourth quarter felt like a lame-duck frame, as only four combined goals were scored, two by each team, giving the Pioneers the 17-7 victory over Molloy. The Lions have not won the matchup between the two teams since their one-goal win back in 2014.
The Pioneers have a brief break in their ECC schedule as they welcome Wilmington University to Brookville on Tuesday April 2 at 3:30 p.m.
Molloy next travels to New Jersey to take on Felician University on Wednesday April 3 at 7:30 p.m.
