FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Yale men’s lacrosse coach Andy Shay wasn’t about to let the NCAA tournament trophy awarded to his team after Monday’s 13-11 defeat of Duke slip beyond his reach, let alone his sight.

Yale’s 15-year buildup from Ivy League afterthought to national champion was complete, and part of Shay still seemed in disbelief nearly an hour after the Bulldogs celebrated after the final horn.

“I’m still not comfortable,” he said, simultaneously fielding questions and eyeing the trophy his team hauled off the Gillette Stadium field after claiming a title before 29,455.

That’s perfect, really, because nothing about Yale is designed to be comfortable. Not the rugged, physical approach. Not the tasking practices. And surely not the pressure the resilient Bulldogs bring to bear on opponents, a fact that could get overlooked since Yale’s regular season dominance this decade didn’t have much in the way of postseason follow-ups.

Until now.

Matt Gaudet scored four goals for the third-seeded Bulldogs (17-3), giving him 10 for the championship weekend and earning him the tournament’s most outstanding player honor. Tewaaraton finalist Ben Reeves had a goal and three assists, and midfielder Jack Tigh recorded a hat trick in the first half.

Meanwhile, goalie Jack Starr made nine saves, and short-stick defensive midfielder Tyler Warner cooled off Duke midfielder Nakeie Montgomery, helping to prevent the freshman from attempting a shot after he entered the day with eight goals in three tournament games.

From start to finish, it was a reflection of the identity Shay has constructed in New Haven throughout his tenure.

“It's incredible for the program,” Reeves said. “All the guys that came before us that helped build the culture and build the brand that this program is. All the credit to coach Shay and the rest of the coaching staff. They do a tremendous job every single day getting us ready and building the culture, and just who Yale lacrosse is as a team.”

Shay couldn’t help but think of his first full recruiting class — the bunch that graduated in 2008, five years after he was hired off Greg Cannella’s staff at UMass —as he pondered Yale’s first NCAA tournament title. It’s the school’s first recognized national championship in the sport since sharing the 1883 crown — yes, Eighteen Eighty-Three — with Harvard and Princeton.

That 2008 class left campus two years before the Bulldogs’ first 10-win season under Shay and four years before Yale would snap a 20-year NCAA tournament drought. It still crushes Shay to think about it, considering how much of the foundation they laid for the run this decade.

“You peel back the players and you’d see the same stuff,” said Shay, whose team became the first Ivy League program to win a title since Princeton in 2001.

What was on display this weekend was a remarkable toughness, as well as an eagerness to take the fight to opponents. The Bulldogs scored on their first four possessions in both halves Saturday against Albany, and nearly followed that exact script to sink the fourth-seeded Blue Devils (16-4).

Yale scored the first three times it had the ball, placing Duke in an early hole.

“Something that Yale's never really been good at [was] up-tempo offense,” Gaudet said. “Our coaches really worked on that this year. The coaching staff really instilled what it's like to promote fast breaks, and 5-v-5s. I think just the hard work we put in this entire year kind of really set the precedent for that.”

The Blue Devils twice closed within a goal, though Joseph Sessa’s score with 1:52 remaining in the first half bumped Yale’s lead to 6-4. The Bulldogs then found the net four times in their first five possessions after the break — the lone exception coming after a turnover off a faceoff win — to seize a 10-5 advantage.

From there, Yale did what it’s historically done — make opponents miserable with tough, deliberate and technically sound play. The Bulldogs had the ball five times in the fourth quarter for approximately 9:25 of possession time, effectively smothering Duke by milking the clock for at least a minute with each opportunity.

“They had more possessions, and we weren’t picking up some of the ground balls that I think we would have liked to pick up,” Duke midfielder Brad Smith said. “It’s tough to play from behind against anybody. They were smart with the ball, and kind of took the air out of it a little bit.”

Duke closed within 13-11 on Peter Conley’s extra-man goal with 3:13 to go, but wouldn’t see the ball again for more than two minutes. The Blue Devils only got one more shot on cage, with Starr stuffing attackman Justin Guterding in the closing seconds.

“I really believed that we were going to make it 13-12 and we were going to face off,” Duke coach Danowski said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, but I think the theme is we’re going to be back. When we do, this experience, we’ll draw from it.”

For Yale’s senior class, it was the culmination of a four-year run that was previously steeped in postseason misery. There was the first-round exit at Maryland in 2015, when the Bulldogs squandered a three-goal lead in the fourth quarter but nearly forced overtime on a shot that hit the crossbar in the final 30 seconds.

Then came a first-round upset loss to Navy, followed by a one-goal setback at Syracuse last year.

“We got bounced in the first round quite a bit the last three years,” Warner said. “To get that monkey off our back, we felt like this year we had a special group and that we’d be able to do it.  Getting bounced in the first round has been tough, but it’s all worth it now.”

Shay acknowledged there was some bad luck in previous years, and probably a few helpful bounces along the way this month. In truth, Yale didn’t need much help in this postseason, as it blew past UMass, Loyola, Albany and finally Duke.

The Bulldogs trailed for just 3 minutes, 9 seconds over the course of the four games, all of it in the first round. Not once in the tournament were they even tied in the second half. And this weekend, they led for all but 2 minutes, 29 seconds.

If there was a turning point for the program, it probably wasn’t this year. Instead, it might have come after the 2009 season. It was then Shay realized it was best to concentrate far more on his own team than opponents, especially with the Ivy League’s truncated practice schedule. Then came an Ivy regular season title in 2010.

Tournament bids soon followed. A blue-collar worth ethic was firmly established.

And, as of Monday afternoon, it’s brought Yale to the pinnacle of the sport.

“From there, it was kind of maybe I saw the light,” Shay said. “The kids still try to reinforce the culture. It's the same style of kid, the same type of person. It just got better and better, and they wanted more and more. So here we are.”

And if anyone is, say, uncomfortable with that, so be it. On the day it reached the top, Yale wouldn’t have it any other way.