Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 3/7/16
From Press Release and Staff Report
Henry Blynn (attackman) and Will Gural (face-off specialist) formed a dynamic duo when they helped lead Haverford School to an Inter-Ac League championship in 2012.
Haverford School grads Henry Blynn (left) and Will Gural have helped Brown vault to No. 5 in the nation in Division I
Now, as seniors at Brown, they are helping the Bears reach levels never before accomplished.
Today Brown (3-0 overall) moved to the No. 5 spot in the USILA and Cascade/Maverik Media polls, the highest ranking ever for a Brown team.
Blynn and Gural have been key cogs in the early-season push.
Blynn – the Phillylacrosse.com Player of the Year in 2012 – had three goals and an assist in Saturday’s 15-7 win over UMass. He has 8 goals and 2 assists this year after scoring 38 goals last year.
Gural has been dominant at the face-off X, winning 12 of 15 draws vs UMass and 43 of 59 overall with two goals. His 73 percent success rate is tops in the nation.
Blynn returned to the Brown lineup after missing the entire 2014 season due to injury and responded in 2015 with 38 goals and 14 assists. Blynn opened the 2016 season with two goals against Quinnipiac, and registered a hat-trick against #19 Stony Brook with three goals. Last year, Blynn was eighth in the Ivy League with 2.24 goals per game and netted a career-high six goals against Providence. Blynn has scored 65 career goals and handed out 22 assists for 87 career points.
Gural opened the season by winning 11-of-14 face-offs vs. Quinnipiac, and came back by winning 20-of-30 face-off against #19 Stony Brook. Against UMass, Gural won 12-of-15 face-offs. Last year, Gural captured 233-of-391 face-offs (.596), 12th best in the nation. Gural is also an offensive threat, with six goals last season. He won 16-of-20 face-offs in Brown’s Ivy League Playoff game vs. Yale, and registered a 12-9 advantage vs. Princeton. His 5.17 ground balls per game ranked 25th nationally. He also turned in an outstanding performance vs. Denver in the NCAA Playoffs, winning 15-of-25 face-offs against the nation’s #1 face-off man, Trevor Baptiste.
The Bears will take on another New England rival, Holy Cross, in a afternoon game on Tuesday, in Worcester, Mass. All the action begins at 3:00 pm at Holy Cross Field. The Brown-Holy Cross series dates back to 1963 with the Bears holding a 14-0 series advantage over the Crusaders. The two teams last met in 1990, a 27-2 Brown victory.
The Crusaders, coming off a 10-9 loss to #5 Loyola, may very well be the best 0-5 team in the country. The Crusaders have lost two other games by one goal, #14 Harvard (11-10 2ot) and Lehigh (12-11), and dropped games to Providence (12-8) and Vermont (14-8).