PETERBOROUGH, ONT -- Brendeen Lundy and Cole Hanrahan each registered hat-tricks as the top-seeded Trent Excalibur cruised to a 12-5 victory over McGill in a Baggataway Cup national semifinal at the Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association championship, Saturday.

It was the first game of the tournament for Trent, which earned a first-round bye as the top seed in the CUFLA East. The game was played before an estimated hometown crowd of 1,000 fans at Justin Chiu Stadium.

Trent led 3-2 after the first quarter, 8-2 at halftime and 9-3 after three, then outscored the visitors 3-2 in the final frame.

The Redbirds, who upset Western on Friday, never seemed to find their legs and produced only five goals, a season-low offensive output in 13 games overall. Playing without injured sniper Cameron McGinnis, McGill was paced by Isaiah Cree, from the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation in upstate New York, who potted a pair of goals to finish with seven in two tourney contests.The 22-year-old senior in international development studies, was McGill's lone laureate to earn Baggataway Cup All-Tournament honours.

Other McGill marksmen were Luke Dawick, Rowan Birrell and Daniel Chand.

Rounding out the scoring for Trent, with two goals apiece, was Taite Cattoni, Holden Lowes and Colton Armstrong.

Goaltender Jackson Browne was running on empty between the pipes for Trent, earning player of the game honours. Joseph Boehm was saddled with the loss for McGill.

The Redbirds took seven of the 12 penalties called.

The Excalibur are now poised to win their first-ever league title, when they confront third-seeded Brock in the gold medal game on Sunday at 2 p.m. The Badgers advanced after upsetting top-seeded Guelph 9-5 in Saturday's other semifinal.

The CUFLA all-stars will be announced after the weekend.


This setback will be chalked up as a learning experience for McGill, a young, talented team that registered an 8-5 record overall and pulled off back-to-back playoff upsets on the road -- at Queen's and against Western -- before succumbing in the national semifinal.

"It wasn't the result we wanted to see, " said Nicolas Soubry, in his first season and second year as McGill head coach. I still feel (that) in different circumstances, the rresult could have been different, but they weren't and we lost a great game versus Trent... Our coaching staff cannot thank our graduating seniors enough. In our (team) history, no one has placed these guys in a tougher situation than I di this year. With every single starting position open due to graduation (over the past two years), I asked them to create a new team culture... one of friendship, support, respect and equality. The result was a team (that) had a lot of fun... The thing that I'll miss the most (in the off-season) is walking down the hallway or arriving for one of our 6:30 a.m. practices and hearing the guys already laughing and enjoying being together."

The Redbirds featured a roster with 12 freshmen, six sophomores, eight juniors and 10 seniors. They are expected to lose eight to graduation, a group that includes Cameron McGinnis, Daniel Chand, Ethan Forgrave, Steven Pelliccione, Christopher Parkinson, Nathan Perrello, Declan Kingston-Fry and Hayden Middlebrook.

SCORING SUMMARY

BAGGATAWAY CUP RESULTS


SOURCE:
Earl Zukerman
Sports Information Officer
Athletics & Recreation
McGill University
514-398-7012
www.mcgillathletics.ca
earl.zukerman@mcgill.ca
@EarlZukerman (twitter)