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The Pioneers won the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference regular season title for the second consecutive year this past Saturday, beating conference foe Bellarmine 15-9 in their final road game of the season while also extending their win streak to seven games.
With the win, the No. 5-ranked Pioneers (10-2, 5-0 ECAC) clinched the No. 1 seed in the ECAC Tournament, which will be held on campus at Peter Barton Lacrosse Stadium on May 5 and 7.
“We talk about championships and we always tell the guys to never down them,” said head coach Bill Tierney. “We won it and have another game against a great Fairfield team. We want to go undefeated in the league, but we know that we have bigger fish to fry.”
DU was led by junior attack-man Mark Matthews, who finished with seven points off of five goals and two assists against Bellarmine, one point shy of tying the all-time Division I single-game record.
Matthews is now five points from tying the school record in only his third season as a Pioneer.
He has 53 points this season off of 34 goals and 19 assists.
However, Matthews was not the only one to contribute for the Pioneers. Junior attackman Alex Demopoulos and sophomore midfielders Eric Law and Hayden Schuette scored two goals each.
Demopoulos finished with a total of four points, adding two assists.
Also scoring for DU were sophomore midfielders Cameron Flint and Jeremy Noble each with one goal.
Sophomore Chase Carraro won the faceoff battle finishing the game 15-28, continuing a strong second season, where he has won 58.6 percent of faceoffs this season coming off a season best 15-21 two weekends ago against Ohio State.
Freshman goaltender Jamie Faus recorded the victory, stopping 11 shots, which was his third double-digit save performance. Faus has nine wins in net this season.
As for the Knights (4-10, 0-5 ECAC) they finished the day with Colton Clark recording four points with one goal and three assists, while Lance Robinson with two points off of one goal and one assist.
DU led the game in shots (42-36), ground balls, saves (11-7) and the faceoff battle (15-28).
The Pioneers look to complete their perfect conference season on Saturday, when they host Fairfield University at Peter Barton Lacrosse Stadium. The game starts at 1 p.m.
