The challenge was there, from his coaches, from his teammates and most of all, from his adversary. He had moments of inconsistency earlier in the season, and the athlete he was up against was one of the best in the country.

But Dane Collins was ready. And his coaching staff knew it.

“If you noticed, Jeff Zywicki took the first faceoff each of the first nine games,” UMass coach Greg Cannella said. “Dane Collins took the first faceoff today. We trust him. We have faith in him.

“We challenged Dane all week and it was great to see a young guy like that stand up to a challenge – [Yale’s Dan Kallaugher] was winning 64, 65 percent of the faceoffs coming in,” he continued. “That was probably the key to the game, our ability to win faceoffs when they scored, rather than just when we scored.”

And from the first faceoff, Collins established himself. He won that head-to-head matchup. UMass scored. He won the next faceoff. Again, the Minutemen posted a tally. He won the third. And the Maroon and White was controlling the game.

“You can come back when you lose early in the game but it helps your confidence so much when you win early in the game, because you know you’ve got the kid,” Collins said. “So you know deep down in the fourth quarter you’re going to be there with the guy.”

Kallaugher entered the contest having won nearly 65 percent of his draws, and was one of the top freshmen in the country in that respect. And from beginning to end, he was dominated by a fellow rookie who had struggled at points this season.

“We worked a lot all week because the kid is probably top five in the country,” Collins said, “so we knew if we were going to win the game, me and [fellow faceoff man] Jake [Deane] had to have a big day so we worked on his move a lot and tried to get after him as much as we could.”

But it wasn’t just Collins’ performance (14-of-21 on faceoffs) that was a keystone to UMass’ 12-10 victory. His wingmen also had one of their best games as a unit, helping the Minutemen outdraw the Bulldogs 17-8.

“We worked on it all week and it came together today finally,” freshman Steven Byrnes said. “We were struggling a couple of the last games and we figured we had to get it up and we did today.”

“This week in practice, Dane definitely used us more and started talking to us more so now we’re all on the same page, I feel like,” senior Chris Fiore said. “He stepped it up unbelievably compared to the past couple games. If he did lose [the faceoff], he stopped the break, and when he won it, we had a break.”

Collins and Kallaugher had many faceoffs where they were tied up right off the whistle for extended periods of time. While that would appear to indicate an even matchup, in reality, it was to the benefit of the Minutemen.

“[The coaching staff] said going into it that he was a smaller kid and he was fast, so they didn’t want me getting into that kind of game with him,” Collins said. “They wanted me to tie him up, use my weight and strength and bully him around, so that’s what I did.

“It’s easier when you’re just getting the ball out to one of your wingmen and taking off, but when it’s like that it’s just hard work every faceoff,” he continued.

And the Maroon and White witnessed firsthand the importance of winning faceoffs at the end of the first quarter, when Kallaugher won consecutive draws and the Bulldogs tallied two goals in the final 20 seconds.

“Anytime you can get one right at the end or right at the beginning, there’s momentum,” Cannella said. “I thought we played a great first quarter. And then, boom, it’s 3-2. But that’s lacrosse. We tell our guys all the time, you can’t relax for a second in any of these games.”

But on top of Collins being happy about his performance, the entire Minuteman lacrosse family had nothing but praises to sing of the freshman following Saturday’s victory.

“Dane wants to do well,” Cannella said. “There’s not a guy on this team that doesn’t want to do well, and there’s not a guy on this team that doesn’t want Dane Collins to do well. He’s a really likeable kid and a great team guy. He’s probably a little pissed off that he hasn’t done well the last couple of games. Hopefully it’s a good lesson for him and something he can carry over.”