After opening America East conference play by going winless across its first two games, fortune finally favored the Binghamton women’s soccer team on Thursday night when they came back to beat hosts UMBC 4-3. The Retrievers opened the game with a 3-0 run against the Bearcats, but four unanswered goals down the stretch powered BU to its first conference win of the season.

“We knew we had to respond,” said Binghamton coach Neel Bhattacharjee. “It would have been difficult for us, in terms of postseason and all of that, if we start out the season 0-3.”

Although the scoreboard remained knotted at zero for the first 10 minutes of play despite two shots on goal from BU, the battle between Binghamton (4-5-2, 1-2 AE) and UMBC (5-6-1, 1-1-1 AE) quickly began to look like a blowout in favor of the hosts. In the 14th minute, regaining possession off a Bearcat miss, the Retrievers pierced through BU’s backline to punch in the game’s first goal. This marked the start of a 10-minute stretch where UMBC’s attack got off six more shots, including insurance goals in the 18th and 21st minutes. While BU silenced the Retrievers for the remainder of the period, a well-hit ball to the back of the net from freshman forward Jahkaya Davis during the 32nd minute was all the scoring BU got, entering the break down 3-1, despite outshooting UMBC 10-8.

“Obviously not the start that we wanted, nor that we anticipated to be down 3-0 21 minutes into the game,” Bhattacharjee said. “We did some things that were uncharacteristic from us in terms of the defensive standpoint … there are some things that we didn’t do in terms of our midfield pressure, and some things that we can do as far as just giving up shots and not stepping into them in the defensive third.”

With the threat of a third straight AE loss in front of them, the Bearcats regrouped coming out of the break, and locked in on closing the gap. The comeback began on the defensive end, as Binghamton held UMBC scoreless for the remainder of the game. The effort was headlined by two clutch saves in minutes 52 and 79 from sophomore goalkeeper Rebecca Kessler who recovered from a shaky first half to keep BU in the contest.

“What I really liked at halftime is you could see that we weren’t out of it,” Bhattacharjee said. “Our players had belief. They knew that we didn’t play to the ability that we could have, so there was definitely still belief that we could get back into the game.”

Yet, despite this defensive effort, Binghamton still struggled to find offensive answers as the period came down to its final 10 minutes. But the hopes of a comeback would turn into reality in the 85th minute when a pass from senior forward Hannah Mimas was collected by Davis, who punched in her second goal of the game to get BU within one. From there, the floodgates opened for the Bearcats. Senior forward Mackenzie Ryder was the next to send a ball past UMBC’s keeper in the 87th minute, tying the game.

As the clock wound down, it became clear that the next goal would win the game. With less than a minute to play, a BU corner kick was seemingly cleared by UMBC. The play wasn’t dead yet though — the cleared ball ended up at the feet of junior defender Allison Falvo who quickly sent it in the direction of junior forward Lauren Clark. With the game on the line, Clark sailed the ball to the bottom right corner of the box, where it ended up just out of reach for UMBC. The final score was 4-3, and for the first time since AE play started, it was in favor of Binghamton.

“From my standpoint, you got to make a decision,” Bhattacharjee said. “It’s like, ‘okay, well, we got all the way back from 3-0 — do we sit back and just hold on to this tie?’ But we decided to go for it … We knew that this is a game that we wanted to get a full three points from a win, not one point from a tie. So we went forward.”

BU will look to carry its momentum from the breakout victory back to campus on Sunday, Oct. 13 as it is set to take on Bryant. Kick-off is scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Bearcats Sports Complex in Vestal, New York.