Hoyas snap skid in overtime

Craig Dowd stopped with the ball behind the goal, and for a moment, everything froze.

The Georgetown junior attack scanned the field, searching for the inspired play and player that would not only rescue Georgetown in overtime against Harvard, but also provide hope that the Hoyas’ tattered season could still be salvaged.

On cue, as life reached full speed again, Ricky Mirabito appeared, slicing through the gap in the Crimson defense, meeting Dowd’s perfectly delivered pass for a close-range finish and a 9-8 sudden-death victory, the Hoyas’ first win in three games.

“We needed something to turn this around,” said Mirabito, who scored the other two of his team-high three goals in the fourth quarter. “The last couple of weeks have been less than what we wanted but we needed this. Hopefully this can push us through the rest of the year, and we can use it as a turnaround.”

In a sometimes sloppy, often physical contest, newly unranked Georgetown (3-4) not only matched the 11th-ranked Crimson (4-2) goal for goal – the game was tied on the scoreboard at the end of every quarter –but also turnover for turnover. Harvard won that dubious honor, 18-16, but it also did better turning loose balls into goals, none more frustrating than Travis Burr’s sweep of a groundball past Jack Davis (10 saves) for 7-6 advantage with under four minutes to play.

The Hoyas also gave up the first goal of the afternoon in just six seconds and had two- and one-goal leads, respectively, erased with scores in the final moments of both the first and second quarters.

“We’re putting it on the ground, it seems to bounce into the wrong guy’s stick, and the next thing it ends up in the goal,” said Hoyas head coach Dave Urick.

But Georgetown didn’t lose its spirit or determination. Andrew Brancaccio and Scott Kocis each displayed powerful individual skills to register two goals apiece, Dowd finished with a goal and two assists, and Todd Cochran’s off-speed one-hopper fooled Harvard goalkeeper Joe Pike (12 saves) to give the Hoyas an 8-7 lead with 53 seconds to play.

Crimson leading scorer Jeff Cohen responded with his first goal of the afternoon only 26 seconds later to send the game into an extra period, but Georgetown never gave up possession after the first overtime face-off.

“[Heart was] an awful lot of it,” said Urick. “We didn’t out coach them, that’s for sure. The guys played hard. It wasn’t perfect. But the effort was there.”