[media-credit id=2228 align=”alignright” width=”199″][/media-credit]After an upset win against No. 17 Brown last weekend, the Quinnipiac men’s lacrosse team lost to Vermont, 10-5,  on Saturday at home.

The Bobcats were down early, trailing 7-2 at halftime. Despite a much-improved second half, where each team scored three goals, they couldn’t climb their way back.

“We’ve just got to be smarter about the way we come out and play,” Quinnipiac head coach Eric Fekete said. “The first half kind of got away from us. I feel like we got a little bit desperate being down.”

Fekete identified penalties as being the biggest problem for Quinnipiac in this one.

“We need to stay out of the penalty box,” he added. “Ten penalties is way too much. It throws the dynamic of our game off a lot. We kind of lose our flow and those guys have a lot of highly skilled players.”

The bright spot for the Bobcats was freshman attack Jake Tomsik, who notched two goals on five shot attempts. Tomsik now has a team-leading eight goals in three games this season.

“He is very competitive and very poised for a young guy,” Fekete said. “His future is unbelievable here. I think he’s really the brains of the operation on offense and you can see he’s drawing more and more attention every week defensively. People know what a good player he is.”

Junior attack Foster Cuomo and junior midfielder Matt Frost each scored for the Bobcats, along with senior midfielder Brian Feldman, who is now just one shy of 100 career goals.

With senior goalie Carson Cocco out with an injury, sophomore Joe Zukauskas made his season debut between the pipes. Zukauskas made 12 saves on 22 shots.

“I thought Joe did a pretty good job, especially in the second half,” Fekete said. “He made some big saves.”

[media-credit id=2228 align=”alignright” width=”202″][/media-credit]Unlike last week’s win against Brown, the Bobcats were unable to complete the comeback. Fekete attributed some of that to their opponent.

“I think they were very good. I give them as much credit as I can and I thought their goalie played very well.”

Catamount goalie Nick Washuta made 15 saves, but the Bobcats also hit the post five times.

Senior defenseman Adam Bellamy also emphasized the importance of coming out strong and avoiding penalties.

“Two games now we went down a lot early, but last week we had the adversity to bounce back,” he said. “If we stayed out of the box, it might have been a closer game for sure.”

Quinnipiac went 3-for-4 on extra-man opportunities, but went down a man eight times throughout the game.

The Bobcats look to get back to .500 when they host New Jersey Institute of Technology on March 3.

“It’s a long journey,” Fekete said. “We’re three games into a fourteen game season. We just got to be better next Saturday.”