May 19, 2016 
Among the many storylines on Saturday will be the matchup between two-time Patriot League Defensive Player of the Year
Chris Fennell from Navy and 2016 Tewaaraton Award finalist Dylan Molloy of Brown.
Game Day Storylines •
Scene Setter: Following its 13-10 victory over fourth-seeded Yale in the opening round of the 2016 NCAA Men's Lacrosse Tournament, 15th-ranked Navy will make the trek to Providence, R.I. to battle fifth-seeded Brown on Saturday in the quarterfinals. Faceoff is set for 2:30 PM at Brown Stadium. The 11-4 Mids are led by fifth-year head coach
Rick Sowell, while the 15-2 Bears are under the direction of 10th-year head coach Lars Tiffany. Saturday's contest marks just the fourth meeting in a series Navy leads, 2-1.
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Follow the Action: The Navy-Brown game will be televised via ESPNU with Mike Corey and Matt Ward calling the action. Additionally, Pete Medhurst and Joe Miller will provide the call on 1430 AM / 99.9 FM WNAV. Radio coverage begins with the Navy Lacrosse Pregame Show at 2:15 PM. The game will also be streamed online via WatchESPN, while live stats will be available at NavySports.com.
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Program Ties: Navy's
Rick Sowell and Brown's Lars Tiffany are certainly no strangers. Tiffany served as an assistant coach on Sowell's staff at Dartmouth during the 1999 and 2000 seasons. Ironically, both eventually moved on to serve as the head coach at Stony Brook - Tiffany from 2005-06 and Sowell 2007-11. Brown senior attackman Kylor Bellistri is the son of Naval Academy grad ('86) and former lax standout Jeff Bellistri.
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How Far They Have Come: Navy's 15-member senior class won just 7 games in its first two seasons combined (7-20). Ironically, the Mids equalled that win total earlier this season when they won seven in a row. Over the last two seasons combined, Navy has won 20 games (20-9) while claiming a share of two Patriot League regular-season titles and made the program's first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2009.
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Mids Seek #12: Navy is looking for its 12th win of the season, a feat it has not achieved since 2005 (12-4). Navy's 11 wins this season are the most since 2009 (11-5), the last time the Mids earned an NCAA Tournament berth.
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Old Fashioned Duel: Saturday's contest will feature the nation's #1 offensive unit against the #2 defensive squad. Brown leads the country with its 16.76 goals per game, reaching double figures in all 17 contests. The Bears' Dylan Molloy and Kylor Bellistri are #1 and #2 nationally in points/gm and #3 and #4 in goals/gm. Navy boasts a 7.13 scoring defense and has surrendered double-figure goals 5 times this season. Since 2004, the Mids are 94-28 when holding their opponent to single digits. Navy (15 gms), along with Notre Dame (14 gms), have given up the fewest goals in the country to date with 107.
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Maryland Strong: Navy, Maryland, Loyola and Towson will represent the state of Maryland in this weekend's quarterfinals. It's the first time there have been 4 Maryland teams in the quarters since 2001 - Johns Hopkins, Maryland, Towson and Loyola.
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Unfamiliar Turf: Navy has played just 3 of its 68 games on natural grass since head coach
Rick Sowell took over the program in 2012. The last time Navy played on grass was in 2013 when the Mids battled Holy Cross at the Met's Citifield. In 2012, Navy played Jacksonville at EverBank Field and Maryland at Capital One Stadium before turf was installed. The Mids have lost 7 in a row on grass. Their last win on grass was at North Carolina in the 2008 NCAA Tournament.
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Stat Fact: Brown has scored as many extra-man goals as Navy has had opportunities this spring. The Bears are 30 for 66 (45.5) on EMO, while the Mids are 12 for 30 (40.0) . Brown has been man-down 70 times this year and has given up 26 goals. The Mids have been down 36 times and allowed 15 goals.
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50/100: Senior co-captain
Patrick Keena is just the 32nd player in the program's 109-year history to score 100 career points (42-65=107). Last Sunday against Yale, Keena produced 6 points to become Navy's first 50-point single-season scorer since Jon Birsner in 2006 (18-36=54). Keena (23-31=54) is the first Navy player to score 20 goals and deal out 30 assists in a season since Glen Miles (23-30) in 1986. He is just the 15th different player in school history to score 50 points in a season and 100 in a career.
Scouting the Bears • Tenth-year Brown head coach Lars Tiffany has guided Brown to a 15-2 record this season, including a flawless 6-0 mark in the Ivy League.
• Ranked #4 and seeded #5, Brown heads into the NCAA Quarterfinals having won 7 of its last 8 contests, including a 17-8 victory over Johns Hopkins in opening round of the NCAA Tournament. The Bears' two losses this season were by a combined 2 goals, stumbling in overtime, 11-10, to Bryant and a 13-12 loss to Harvard in the Ivy League Tournament Semifinals. Both losses were at home.
• A veteran team, 7 of the 10 starters are seniors - (A) Henry Blynn, Kylor Bellistri, (M) Brendan Caputo, Matt Graham, Baily Tills, (D) James Lawrence, (G) Jack Kelly.
• Brown is ranked among the top 20 in 13 of the 15 statistical categories, including #1 in scoring offense (16.76), scoring margin (+8.18), points per game (27.88), assists per game (11.12), ground balls per game (39.24). The Bears are #2 in winning percentage (88.2) and shot % (36.4), #3 in faceoff winning % (66.8) and saves per game (12.76) and #5 in caused turnovers per game (8.65). Brown's worst statistical ranking is turnovers per game where it is 60th (16.41) and man-down defense (62.9).
• Brown has reached double digits in every game this season and has been held under 15 goals just four times. Leading the nation's top-ranked offensive unit are attackmen Dylan Molloy, a finalist for the 2016 Tewaaraton Award, and Kylor Bellistri. Molloy has produced 114 points on 60 goals and 54 assists. He is #1 in the nation in points per game (6.71) and #3 in goals per game (3.53). Bellistri, meanwhile, has amassed 84 points on 58 goals and 26 assists. He is #2 nationally in points per game (4.94) and #4 in goals per game (3.41). Henry Blynn has also enjoyed a solid senior year having posted 60 points on 48 goals and 12 assists.
• There are just nine players in the country that have active goal-scoring streaks of 15 games or more ... Brown accounts for three of those players. Molloy and Bellistri have both scored a goal in 25 straight games, while Blynn has punched in a goal in 18 consecutive contests. Syracuse's Dylan Donahue leads the country with goals in 41 straight games.
• Meanwhile, Molloy has recorded a goal or an assist in 36 consecutive games, a streak that began on April 19, 2014. Over that span, he has produced 212 points on 133 goals and 79 assists.
• Senior Jack Kelly guides the defense from between the pipes where he has posted the nation's top save percentage (62.1) and is #8 in goals-against average (7.98). Junior long pole Larken Kemp leads the team with 29 caused turnovers (1.71) and is third on the team with 83 ground balls (4.94). Meanwhile, junior defenseman Alec Tulett has 22 takeaways this spring to go along with his 94 ground balls.
• Senior Will Gural has been sensational at the faceoff "x" where he has won 232 of the 331 draws (70.1) he has taken this spring. He stands #2 in the nation. Sophomore Ted Ottens is his backup, winning 80 of the 135 faceoffs (59.3) he has taken.
• Brown has nearly doubled up its competition in scoring this season as the Bears have scored 285 goals to their opponents' 146. Brown has outscored its foesm 141-60 in the first half, including a 74-29 margin in the opening quarter.
Navy vs. Brown - The Series • Saturday's contest will be just the fourth meeting between the Mids and the Bears and the first since 1994. Navy owns a slight 2-1 advantage in a series that has seen the two programs meet just once in the regular season.
• Navy and Brown meet in the NCAA Tournament for the third time with each team winning a tourney game on its home field. The Mids scored a 14-6 victory over Brown in the opening round of the 1987 NCAA Tournament played in Annapolis. Meanwhile, the Bears picked up a 12-5 victory against Navy in the first round of the 1994 NCAA Tourney in Providence.
• Saturday's contest marks just the second meeting between the two in Providence.
• Navy head coach
Rick Sowell owns a 3-2 record against Brown, playing all five contests when he was the head coach at Dartmouth.
Tourney Talk • This is Navy's 27th overall appearance in the NCAA Tournament in what is its 109th year of varsity lacrosse.
• It's the Mids' first appearance in the NCAA Tournament since 2009.
• Navy owns a 17-26 record in the national tournament.
• This is Navy's first quarterfinals appearance since 2008 when it upset fourth-seeded North Carolina (8-7) before succumbing to Johns Hopkins (10-4). Navy is 8-11 in quarterfinals action.
• The Mids have played in the sixth-most (tied)NCAA Tournaments behind Johns Hopkins (44), Maryland (39), Virginia (37), Syracuse (35) and North Carolina (31). Cornell has also made 27 appearances.
• The field accounts for a combined 295 NCAA Tournament appearances - 176 in the Providence bracket (Navy) and 120 in the Columbus bracket.
• The field has won a combined 29 NCAA titles, including a nation's-best 10 by Syracuse. The Providence bracket features teams that have won 21 of the 29 championships (Syracuse, Johns Hopkins and Maryland).
• There are 5 teams in this year's NCAA Tournament field that beat a team in the regular season before losing to that same team in their respective conference tournament: Navy-Army, Notre Dame-Duke, Albany-Hartford, Denver-Marquette and Brown-Harvard.
• Navy has been unseeded in each of its last five appearances (2006-07-08-09-16) and is 3-7 as an unseeded team overall.
• The Mids are 3-2 against teams seeded fifth. The last time Navy met a fifth-seeded team was in 2008 when it dropped a 10-4 decision to Johns Hopkins in the quarterfinals.
• Saturday's contest marks just the fourth in the series against Brown and the third NCAA Tournament contest between the two. Navy won the inaugural meeting in 1931 (12-2), followed by a 14-6 win in the 1987 NCAA Tournament. Brown defeated the Mids, 12-5, in the 1994 NCAA Tournament in Providence.
• Five different coaches have led Navy to the NCAA Tournament since 1971 - Willis Bilderback, Dick Szlasa, Bryan Matthews, Richie Meade and
Rick Sowell.
Willis Bilderback (1-2)
1971-72
Dick Szlasa (7-10)
1973-74-75-76-77-78-79-80-81-82
Bryan Matthews (3-7)
1986-87-88-89-92-93-94
Richie Meade (5-7)
1999-04-05-06-07-08-09
Rick Sowell (1-0)
2016
Sowell Among Elite Company • Fifth-year Navy head coach
Rick Sowell is just the third lacrosse coach overall and only active coach in the sport's history to lead three different D-I programs to the NCAA Tournament. Sowell guided Dartmouth to the 2003 NCAA Tourney, Stony Brook to the 2010 NCAA Quarterfinals and now Navy in 2016.
• Joining him on that list are Jack Emmer and Tony Seaman.
• Denver's Bill Tierney (RIT, Princeton, Denver), Cornell's Matt Kerwick (Alfred, Hobart, Cornell) and Stony Brook's Jim Nagle (SUNY Oneonta, Colgate, Stony Brook) have also led three teams to the NCAA Championship, however, not all three were D-I programs.
