Hollis Brookline boys lacrosse rolls to playoff win over Windham (video)

WINDHAM - The key word for the Hollis Brookline High School boys lacrosse team this season has been consistency.

Not just consistent play from game to game or practice to practice, or even quarter to quarter, but to continue to improve throughout all those moments.

In Monday's Division II playoff opener against Windham, the Cavaliers remained consistent and continued to increase their effort all the way to the end. After a back-and-forth first quarter, HB went ahead by five goals going into halftime and pulled away in the fourth for an 18-9 win over the Jaguars in a first-round game.

The win sends the Cavs (13-1, T-No. 10 in the NHHSS Coaches Poll) to the preliminary round, where they will go on the road to face Keene at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday. The winner of that game moves on to Saturday's quarterfinals.

"The coaches and I challenge these guys at practice to be consistent," HB coach Dom St. Laurent said. "That is a big word for us. It means we’re not plateauing at any point, we’re just going to keep getting better and better. We challenged them right out of the gates to be better in the next quarter and then the next quarter."

Joe O'Reilly led the way for Cavs, scoring four goals and recording six assists, while Ethan Bender added four goals and five assists and Jacob Roy also had four goals and three assists. Hunter Hudzik added three goals and an assist while Ben Dufoe and Tommy Anderson each had a goal and an assist.

Garrett Sturges also had a goal and Andrew Torgersen recorded an assist while Scott Walsh made 10 saves and Justin Colby and Sal Vella won 21 of 31 faceoffs.

After a regular season in which HB outscored its opponents by an average of 9.5 goals, the Cavs were anxious to get the postseason started.

"I think not a lot of people knew who we are, so this was a chance to make a statement, so to speak," O'Reilly said. "We’ve been preparing for the playoffs all year, and when saw it was Windham, we thought that’s a chance to show who we are."

Windham (12-7, T-No. 10) got four goals and four assists from Nate Levine, while Sawyer Hall had two goals and an assist and Alex Ryan had two goals. Matt O'Connor also scored for the Jaguars and Stan Jozokos made seven saves.

"The first quarter and a half, we played the game we’re designed to play," Windham coach Joe Young said. "We let in one or two goals at the halfway mark, and then it’s like you can’t stop it. It’s like quicksand."

The opening quarter-plus of the game saw the lead change three times and the score tied four times. It was 4-4 going into the second after Dufoe scored with 10.8 seconds remaining in the first to tie it.

Roy gave HB the lead for good just 1:15 into the second and added another goal less than two minutes later. Anderson tacked on a goal of his own with 7:51 left in the half to give the Cavs a 7-5 lead.

O'Connor scored a manup goal for Windham to break up the run, but the Cavs scored three more before halftime, including a goal by Hudzik with 13.2 seconds left in the half to give HB a 10-5 lead at the break.

"I think we just relaxed," O'Reilly said of what happened in the second quarter. We got a few good goals and we knew who was going to be their scorers and best defenders, and when the second quarter hit, everything came into place. We capitalized on their mistakes."

The score was unchanged midway through the third quarter when HB's Colin Corban got caught up in a scrum and suffered a serious ankle injury. The game was stopped for more than 20 minutes and an ambulance was called to take Corban from the field.

After play resumed, Windham came storming back, scoring three goals in 1:13 to cut the lead to 10-8. HB was able to win the next faceoff, and after a penalty on the Jaguars, Roy scored a manup goal and Bender added a goal in the final minute of the third and the first minute of the fourth to make it 13-8.

"We made a couple of adjustments and then we came out firing," Young said. "We got the score down, we’re back to playing our game and all of a sudden, they score one or two. We knew for us, we had to press out on defense and that left lanes open, and you’re going to give up goals in that kind of defense."

The Cavs closed the game on a 5-0 run, putting the win away on back-to-back goals from O'Reilly and Hudzik midway through the fourth.

"I think they were very excited as a collective group to have this opportunity," St. Laurent said. "We’ve played the teams we’ve played and we’ve had some challenges and some opportunities to work on some stuff. I think they were excited to test themselves. We worry about what we can control and we worry about ourselves, and we wanted to see how we would do and measure up against a team like this."