The Quinnipiac men’s lacrosse team was defeated 11-5 by the Loyola (Md.) Greyhounds in its season opener and first ECAC game at the Quinnipiac Field Hockey & Lacrosse Turf Complex on Saturday.
The Greyhounds took the lead early on in the first quarter with two goals, one at the 10:33 minute mark by attacker Cooper MacDonnell and one two minutes later by midfielder Stephen Murray. Near the end of the quarter, Quinnipiac seemed like it was starting to make a comeback. With a little over a minute remaining, midfielder Garett Kerr put one up on the board, with an assist by attacker Christian Haggerty.
Heading into the second quarter with a 2-1 lead, the Greyhounds looked to increase the gap in the scores. MacDonnell placed another point on the board just under five minutes into play. The gap only increased when attacker Matt Langan scored on Bobcat goalie Kevin Benzing.
In the remaining six minutes of the half, the Bobcats snuck two goals past Greyhound goaltender Jake Hagelin. The first was an unassisted goal by Bobby Schnibbe, while the second was by Alex Marotto off a pass from Todd Kaiser. With only a one-goal gap, the Bobcats were catching up. But the Greyhounds responded with a goal of their own, by Patrick Fanshaw, with seven seconds left in the half, widening the lead to two goals.
“There are certain points in the game when it’s 5-3, and it’s either going to go 5-4 or 6-3,” Quinnipiac head coach Eric Fekete said. “Those are the margins where you lose the games. When it got to a two-goal lead, we needed to capitalize it. When you let it stretch to a four-goal lead, that’s just too much.”
Loyola continued to dominate the match entering the third and fourth quarters. With the only goals of the third quarter —scored by Josh Hawkins and Taylor Ebsary — the Greyhounds were in control of the game. Entering the fourth, Loyola’s Eric Lusby scored 1:04 into the quarter, making the score 8-3.
The Bobcats attempted to make a comeback, with a goal two minutes after Lusby’s and one with 16 seconds remaining in the game, scored by Todd Kaiser and Jack Oppenheimer.
Between the two Quinnipiac goals in the last 15 minutes, Loyola put three more points on the scoreboard. Within two minutes of one another, Langan had scored two more goals and Collin Finnerty one.
“I’m not going to panic about it,” Fekete said. “We just have to be better, and we know what we have to do, and we have to win the next couple games ahead of us. We don’t have another ECAC game until March 20, so we have to get to business and it starts with Wagner on Wednesday.”
The Bobcats will host Wagner on Wednesday at 3 p.m.
