An inexperienced offense was one of many problems that Binghamton men’s lacrosse head coach Scott Nelson claimed as the reason for BU’s season opening loss against Colgate on Saturday.

“We have to continue to improve offensively,” Nelson said. “We had a few five- or six-minute portions of the game where we … had too many turnovers.”

Binghamton came into Saturday’s match coming off of a 4-9 season and with the confidence of bringing back nine seniors for its 2016 campaign. The Bearcats were looking to kick off play on a high note.

Unfortunately, panic started to set in early for BU. The Raiders (1-1) scored three unanswered goals in the first quarter, one by senior midfielder Eric Foote and another by sophomore attacker Anthony Abbadessa, within the first four minutes of the game. The third goal was rifled in by senior midfielder Cam Williams with 8:42 remaining in the quarter.

Despite being shut out in the first quarter, the Bearcats bounced back with two unanswered goals of their own in the second. Senior midfielder Zach Scaduto shot one into the back of the net off an assist from sophomore midfielder Ben Kocis at the 13:37 mark, followed by an unassisted goal from junior midfielder Tyler Deluca with 9:38 remaining in the half to cut BU’s deficit to 3-2.

After each team scored one more goal to cap off the first half, Colgate came out firing, dominating the last 30 minutes of the contest. Despite Kocis notching another assist early in the third quarter — this time to redshirt sophomore attacker Sean Gilroy — the Raiders followed up by scoring five straight goals to finish off the match. Freshman attacker Sam Cleveland fired in two of those scores to go along with his three assists of the day. Two of those assists came in the second half, going to Chase Wittich at 1:09 in the third and one to Anthony Abbadessa for his second score of the day with 14:48 remaining in the fourth quarter. With a final goal by Cleveland at 13:06, the Raiders sealed an 11-4 victory over the Bearcats.

“They’re a good team,” Nelson said of the Raiders. “We were up with them for about two and a half quarters and then we kind of came apart.”

Despite the losing result, Binghamton won the face-off battle, 12-7, while picking up 22 ground balls to Colgate’s 15 — a testament to BU’s seasoned midfield and defense.

“The defense played pretty well for the first two-and-a-half quarters,” Nelson said. “And we did a good job with the face-offs, along with our man-down team.”

Nelson also touched on who he is looking for to lead the young team in these next few games to guide the program to where he wants it to be.

“We’re looking at [senior defenseman Chris] Bechle and [senior defenseman George] Deignan on the defensive end and Zach Scaduto at midfield,” Nelson said. “Those guys will do it for us. They’re good, tough kids and they’ll do fine. We have a great group of seniors and they’ll get us back in there.”

Binghamton’s next matchup comes this Saturday at Marist, and will mark the second matchup of a four-game non-conference schedule for BU.

“Marist is another team that was in the NCAA tournament last year,” he said. “It’s going to be a tough game. They’re a very good team, and they’ll be excited to play us.”

Binghamton is set to face off against Marist at 2 p.m. from Tenney Stadium at Leonidoff Field in Poughkeepsie, New York.