The Binghamton men’s lacrosse team ended up playing its first scheduled road game of the season in Binghamton on Tuesday, but couldn’t capitalize on its home-city advantage. The Bearcats (0-2) lost, 17-10, to 13th-ranked Cornell despite finding offensive production from eight different players.
With freezing temperatures relocating the matchup from Ithaca to the Greater Binghamton Sports Complex, the Big Red (2-1) heated the game up fast by scoring two goals in the game’s opening three minutes. Senior midfielder J.T. Hauck put BU on the board with his first goal of the season just before the game’s five-minute mark, but Cornell senior midfielder Connor Buczek — a first-team All-American honoree in 2014 — responded promptly with his first of four goals after a BU turnover.
Despite one goal apiece in the quarter from senior attackman Tucker Nelson and senior midfielder Emmett O’Hara, the Bearcats were dominated on the offensive end. Heading into the second quarter, Cornell outshot Binghamton, 13-4, and gained a 7-3 lead.
“We’re where we want to be in a lot of things,” BU head coach Scott Nelson said. “We’re just young in spots, and we got to get a little older quicker.”
After starting the second quarter with a goal to widen its lead to 8-3, Cornell was cooled down by the Binghamton defense, unable to find the net on three shot attempts. With under seven minutes to go in the quarter, redshirt freshman attackman Sean Gilroy scored on the Bearcat’s first shot attempt of the quarter to push his season goal total to five. Picking up the ground ball on the ensuing faceoff, freshman defender Kyle Urban finished with a long-stick goal to cut BU’s deficit even further, 8-5. Following a late goal by the Big Red to stop the run, the Bearcats had the final tally of the quarter. A last-second goal by Nelson sent BU to the locker room trailing, 9-6, with momentum on its side.
“I think we learned a lot,” Nelson said. “We played really hard, we hustled. In a lot of ways we did some good things [on Tuesday]. We’ve just got to get better.”
The Big Red stole the momentum back in the third when senior attackman Matt Donovan netted his fourth goal of the matchup with 10 minutes to go in the quarter. After another Cornell goal, Binghamton sank into its biggest hole to that point, 11-6.
Sophomore midfielder Tyler Deluca closed the third stanza with a goal for BU, but going into the final 15, Cornell was on cruise control. Freshman attackman Ben Kocis earned his first goal in the green and white while senior veteran attackmen Paul O’Donnell and Hauck tried to start a late rally of their own. But it was to no avail, as the Big Red continued to pour it on, outscoring BU, 6-3, in the period.
Throughout the game, BU scored on only 20 percent of its man-up chances — the same mark earned in its loss to Marist on Saturday.
“It’s certainly something we want to improve on,” Nelson said of those wasted opportunities. “We’ve got to be at least 4 for 10 to be happy, and right now we’re 2 for 10. So I don’t think we’ve got a long way to go, but we’ve got to improve … That will help us a lot.”
The Big Red also dominated in the ground-ball game en route to its 17-10 win. The Bearcats were topped in the category, 35-15, as the young defense struggled to get a handle on the ball. In the cage, freshman Sam Sanko recorded a team-high six saves in his second start as a Bearcat.
Binghamton is scheduled to face Hobart next as it continues its non-conference schedule. Face-off is set for Saturday at noon at the Bearcat Sports Complex in Vestal, New York.