It was a tight battle between the Binghamton’s women’s lacrosse team and New Hampshire on Friday, but it was the Wildcats (5-8, 2-3 America East) that pulled away, downing Binghamton (6-8, 1-4 AE), 12-9.
“I think we knew we were capable of playing with UNH and went out with a pretty solid game plan,” BU head coach Stephanie Allen said. “Unfortunately we had to come back from a bit of a deficit — you know being down by five we really struggled with our shooting.”
Sophomore attack Samantha Karner got the ball rolling with the first goal of the game to give Binghamton the advantage. But the Bearcats didn’t keep hold of that advantage long, as UNH followed up with a goal of its own shortly after. The tug-of-war between the two squads carried on for most of the first half, until New Hampshire started to pull ahead in the end of the first half, taking a 7-4 lead in the waning seconds of the half.
Sophomore attack Brianne Arthur closed scoring in the first with a free position goal with one second on the clock. Her last-second effort marked her 18th goal of the season as BU entered the half, trailing, 7-5.
The second half started off with the scale in the Wildcats’ favor. Two minutes into the period, New Hampshire senior attack Kayleigh Hinkle bumped the UNH advantage to three. The Wildcat lead extended to five before the BU defense shut down UNH for over 10 minutes, putting four on the board in the process. With under 10 minutes left to play, BU found itself within striking distance with the game at 10-9.
“I think we took advantage of a couple matchups that we had down on our offensive end, and made a slight adjustment to personnel on our defensive side,” Allen said. “But more than anything, I think it was just competing with a little bit more intensity and certainty off of the draw controls — paying attention to our first step and getting a good box on their players.”
Despite the late rally, the Bearcats couldn’t finish the job. A fifth goal by Hinkle followed by another late score by the Wildcats put the nail in the coffin as Binghamton fell, 12-9.
While the main stat of the day didn’t fare in its favor, Binghamton led UNH in shots (26-23) and ground balls (12-10).
“I think it shows that we can step up and compete when we want, but we’ve got to take care of the little things,” Allen said. “It’s our lack of discipline in the area of shooting and a couple things defensively as far as footwork and containing their top players that we struggled a little bit with, so we’ll be focused on that moving forward with Tuesday’s match up.”
Next up, the Bearcats are set to face Colgate on Tuesday. First draw control is scheduled for 4 p.m. at Beyer-Small ‘76 Field in Hamilton, New York.