FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — If the most ideal path to victory in lacrosse is to never let an opponent have the ball, the next best option is to score on every possession.

Denied the chance to do the former in Saturday’s NCAA tournament semifinal, Yale seemingly flirted with the latter in a 20-11 obliteration of Albany at Gillette Stadium.

Tewaaraton finalist Ben Reeves had five goals and four assists as the Bulldogs scored on 16 of their first 23 possessions in their first trip to Memorial Day weekend since 1990 to secure their most lopsided postseason triumph in 14 all-time NCAA tournament games.

Yale (16-3) became the first Division I team to score 20 goals in a semifinal or title game since Syracuse defeated Virginia 20-13 in the 1995 semifinals.

“Our coaches put us in much tougher situations in practice, and I think it was just about not letting the thrill of it all get to you,” attackman Matt Gaudet said. “Obviously Gillette Stadium is an incredible facility, and it's just about using your reset, which is one thing our coaches have really taught us, no matter how bad or how good the play is, starting from square one and starting from scratch.”

The third-seeded Bulldogs advanced to the final for the first time and will meet either top-seeded Maryland or fourth-seeded Duke on Monday.

Connor Fields scored three goals and added two assists in his final college game for the second-seeded Great Danes (16-3), who were making their first appearance in the semifinals but quickly learned things would not go much better than their April 22 trip to Yale — a 14-6 Bulldog victory.

Albany lost Fields to a knee injury early that afternoon, and Yale faceoff ace Conor Mackie got the better of Albany star TD Ierlan 13-8. Yet this got uglier than the teams’ first meeting — and faster, too.

“That’s a tough one,” Albany coach Scott Marr said. “Honestly we didn’t play great. That’s all. The bottom line is that they played better than us. They made plays. Unfortunately, [we] just didn’t have a great day.”

Yale scored on its first four possessions, and seven of its first eight, in the process chasing Albany goalie JD Colarusso before the Great Danes could score a goal. Colarusso would return later and finished with six saves against 15 goals allowed.

“We decided we needed to shoot as efficiently and as intelligently as possible, and it ended up being a rough day for him, unfortunately,” Yale coach Andy Shay said. “He’s a first-team All-American and he’s a great player and a great kid, I’m sure, but I think that we were able to can our shots, and we were extremely efficient as a result. In the first game, he had 19 saves, so we felt like we had the ball, we got volume, and we couldn’t kind of solve him. We worked hard this week on solving him.”

There are a few scores the fifth-year senior would probably like back, but the performance had much more to do with Yale’s technical brilliance. The Bulldogs generated clear look after clear look in the middle of the field, shredding a defense that entered the season’s final weekend ranked fourth in the country in goals allowed (8.0 per game).

Reeves largely did as he pleased, but the same was true of fellow attackmen Gaudet (six goals) and Jackson Morrill (three goals and five assists). Toss in extra-man specialist Brendan Rooney’s two goals and Yale’s top four attackmen shot a combined 16 of 26.

“We have tons of talent on the offensive side. … You’ve got to respect everybody on that side of the ball,” Reeves said.

The throttling Yale administered is never anticipated at this stage of the tournament. Yet the Bulldogs are arguably the most consistent team in the sport this season, and looked like a juggernaut in between a midweek overtime loss to Bucknell in early April and a lopsided Ivy League title game defeat against Cornell.

In the first two weekends of the tournament, Yale let its offense dictate the course of the game in a 15-13 defeat of Massachusetts in the first round, then allowed its defense (and poor weather) to smother Loyola in an 8-5 quarterfinal triumph last week.

This was a mix of the two, and it will make the Bulldogs a difficult out Monday afternoon.

They hounded Albany’s explosive offense into 14 turnovers, and held attackman Tehoka Nanticoke and midfielders Kyle McClancy and Justin Reh to a point apiece. It hardly mattered that Ierlan actually claimed the faceoff battle (18 of 33, all but one of the wins against Mackie). Yale always had the relevant reply, at both ends.

“Throughout the game, we had a lot of mental errors on the offensive end, just throwing the ball away,” Fields said. “We missed passes and were forcing some stuff. I think we had a game plan, and we didn’t execute that game play. They played great on defense, but I think we left a lot on the table out there.”

When the Great Danes inched within 9-5 — hardly a margin that hinted at immediate danger — Gaudet delivered a pair of goals to cushion Yale’s margin. Then came a crusher for Albany; after Marr called timeout with 4.8 seconds left in the first half to set the Danes’ defense, Reeves found Morrill on the restart for a goal to make it 12-7.

“That was incredible,” Shay said. That was a little twist we put in this week on the ride and coach [Andrew] Stimmel put in a plan that worked really well, and our guys executed and they trusted the moment, and it’s a big deal when you can do that going into the half. We felt like that was a big help.”

As if that wasn’t enough, Yale then scored on its first four possessions in the third quarter to stifle any hope of a Great Dane rally.

And with that, Albany’s deepest run in 10 NCAA tournament appearances under Marr ended in muted fashion. The Great Danes can always fondly look back on their breakthrough in the quarterfinals last weekend against Denver, a triumph that marked a door finally opening for a program that seemed on the verge of big things for much of this decade.

As for Saturday’s showing? It was memorable for the wrong reasons, but could be something that prods and prepares Albany’s many returnees in 2019.

“Once you’ve seen it, I think you don’t want to go backward, so you want to keep working hard to get back here and keep it going,” Marr said.

It’s the opportunity Yale enjoys in the title game. Like Albany, the Bulldogs have now gone as far in the tournament as they ever have. Now, arguably the country’s best all-around team is a game away from securing the program’s first NCAA title.