The Binghamton men’s lacrosse team suffered another defeat in its winless season as it was edged out by Delaware on the road this past Saturday. Despite keeping the contest close for the first three quarters, the Bearcats (0-4) fell to the Blue Hens (6-2) by a final score of 10-6.
Two minutes into the matchup, Delaware got onto the scoreboard first with the Bearcats responding just minutes later. Senior midfielder T.J. Tiernan tied the game off a feed from junior midfielder Jon Perotto for his fourth goal of the season.
Over the remainder of the first quarter, the Bearcats and Blue Hens exchanged scores. After being down 3-1, BU tied the game at three apiece. Junior midfielder Joe Licata scored his team-leading eighth goal on the season after freshman attacker Kevin Winkoff dumped it off to him and senior attacker Griffin Konen found the back of the net unassisted for his seventh goal on the season.
The newfound strides of the Bearcats were quickly overshadowed by the Blue Hens’ two leading scorers. Junior attacker Charlie Kitchen and senior attacker Joe Eisele accounted for six of the Blue Hens’ 10 goals, earning their 17th and 13th goals of the season, respectively.
The Bearcats only scored once in the second quarter when sophomore attacker Sean Makar netted his fifth goal of the year on the feed from Licata during an extra-man opportunity. At halftime, the Bearcats trailed 7-4 and only managed to score twice more before the game’s conclusion. Konen scored his second unassisted goal of the match mere minutes into the second half, but it took an additional 10 minutes until Tiernan scored his second goal of the game, unassisted, pulling the Bearcats within one goal of tying the game.
After finding the back of the net with 16 seconds left in the third quarter, the Blue Hens shut out the Bearcats for the entire fourth, scoring on an extra-man opportunity and a garbage time goal with under two minutes remaining.
“I don’t think they [Delaware] changed anything [strategically],” said BU head coach Kevin McKeown. “We tend to have great third quarters in many of our games, which is a point of emphasis. I’m proud of the way we handled it, but we couldn’t get over the hump. We came within one goal towards the end of the game. So no, I don’t think they changed anything during the game.”
For the second consecutive game, the Bearcats were dominated by their opponent in faceoffs, letting up 14 of 22 faceoffs to the Blue Hens. Freshman faceoff specialist Tyler James was unsuccessful on nine of his 13 faceoffs.
“Tyler is a young freshman so we’re looking to improve his game,” McKeown said. “But it’s going to continue to be a team effort, whether it’s improving faceoffs or wing plays as much as possible.”
The Bearcats are looking for their first win of the season and are matched up this week against an Army squad that has kept its games close this season.
“We are looking into how we are going to execute as a team and better execute fundamentals, especially picking up ground balls or clearing on first opportunities,” McKeown said.
Opening faceoff against Army is scheduled for Tuesday, March 12 at 4 p.m. at the Bearcats Sports Complex in Vestal, New York.