NEW HAVEN, Conn. – UMass didn’t want to let Ben Reeves beat it. Instead, it got the Jackson Morrill show.

With the Minutemen focusing on the the three-time Tewaaraton finalist Reeves with sticks on his gloves and quick slides, the sophomore Morrill scored a career-high seven goals to help No. 3 seed Yale win its first tournament game since 2013, 15-13. Yale will take on the winner of Loyola and Virginia in the NCAA quarterfinals on Saturday at Hofstra University.

“I was just sticking to what we wanted to do from the start of the game,” said Morrill, whose previous career high was five goals. “I had two easy inside ones – a couple of dunks, and just saw some better opportunities there and took them.”

The Minutemen kept things close throughout the first half, trailing 6-5 at the break only to see the Bulldogs explode with a 6-2 third quarter, powered largely by three goals by Morrill in the frame. All three came off feeds from Reeves, who scored twice and assisted four times in the contest, with all but one point coming in the second half.

UMass rallied hard down the stretch, but couldn’t quite close the gap before time ran out.

Yale pushed its lead to 14-7 early in the fourth before the Minutemen began marching back, echoing a similar late but ultimately futile comeback in the teams’ regular season matchup. The UMass fans, who traveled down interstate 91 to make up a good portion of the announced attendance of 1,411 at Reese Stadium, came alive down the stretch as the Minutemen clawed back, but a key stop on a late UMass man-up slammed the door on the rally.

“When a team goes on a run, we just try to keep the same response [as any other situation],” defenseman Jerry O’Connor said of the key kill of a two minute penalty in the fourth with UMass trailing by three and 3:28 remaining. “Obviously it’s tough, but we take a lot of pride in our man-down and emphasize it in practice, so we just tried to bring more energy.”

Conor Mackie also had a dominant day for the Bulldogs, winning 20 of 29 face-offs and scooping 13 ground balls to keep his team on the attack throughout much of the contest. He briefly left the field following a hard hit late in the second quarter, but returned to help power the dominant third quarter run.

UMass, which saw an 11 game winning streak snapped to close its season, was led by three goals and an assist from Buddy Carr and a hat-trick out of Ben Spencer in the loss. Sean Sconone made 10 saves for the Minutemen, who closed the year with a 12-5 record.

“Yale is a great team, and they certainly earned it today,” head coach Greg Canella said of the effort led by his own former assistant coach Andy Shay, who has been Yale’s coach for 15 years and will lead the team to its second quarterfinal appearance in his tenure next weekend. “We played a lot of defense early and got a little tired – and that showed obviously when they went on their run in the third quarter.

“This game was kind of a microcosm of our season where we started 1-4 and faced a lot of adversity, but then went on a run. We’re proud of our guys and our senior class especially.”

Powered by Mackie’s dominance at the X and several successes in its full-field ride schemes – UMass cleared successfully 13 of 17 times in the game – Yale held a 10-shot advantage over the Minutemen, 48-38. That advantage was even wider before the Minutemen went on a 16-7 blitz in the fourth as they outscored Yale 6-3. But in the end the Bulldogs were successfully able to bend and not break, rebounding from last weeks’ disappointing loss to Cornell in the Ivy League finale and snapping a stretch of three straight first round losses in the NCAA tournament. After struggling to combat the Big Red’s bottling up of Reeves last week, the Bulldogs had six players score goals on Saturday, with both Matt Gaudet and Lucas Cotler scoring twice. Brian Tevlin also added a pair of assists in the contest.

“I’m proud of my guys for grinding out a win,” said Shay. “UMass didn’t go away, and we knew they wouldn’t. We got a little loose with some of the details in the fourth… but we were able to play through some adversity and get better.”

Yale, which moves to 14-3 on the year with the victory, fell in its last quarterfinal appearance by a goal to Syracuse, 7-6 in 2013. The Bulldogs’ last championship weekend was all the way back in 1990, but Reeves and Co. will have another shot at making the program’s second appearance in the final four one week from today against either the Cavaliers or the NO. 6 seed Greyhounds, who play in Saturday’s late game at Ridley in Baltimore.