The men’s lacrosse team (2-4 overall, 0-1 Patriot League) began Patriot League play this past weekend, falling to No. 7 Loyola Maryland 15-11 after the Greyhounds pulled away in the third quarter.
Junior attacker Kalman Kraham said that the Leopards, being a smaller team in the Patriot League, pride themselves for maintaining a strong team culture that enables them to compete with nationally-ranked programs like Loyola’s.
“We were a young team my freshman year, but since we’re getting older, we’re developing that talent,” he said. “We’re not the cream of the crop, but we kind of take that as a chip on our shoulder.”
Sophomore midfielder Liam Sargent scored his first of two goals of the day at the 13:13 mark to give the Leopards an early 1-0 lead, but Loyola quickly responded with three goals.
With four minutes left in the first quarter, junior attacker Peter Lehman found the back of the net to break Loyola’s scoring streak. Senior attacker Ryan Duncan then netted a goal at 1:43 off an assist from Sargent.
Down 4-3 heading into the second quarter, junior midfielder John Mathes tied things up at 4-4 shortly after the break. Loyola managed to get back ahead, closing the second quarter with two goals to head into halftime up 6-4.
Loyola was the first to find the back of the net coming out of the half, taking advantage of a man-up opportunity to extend its lead to 7-4. Less than a minute later, Kraham responded with his first of two goals.
Both offenses were on fire in the third quarter, scoring 10 total goals. Loyola scored four straight, extending its lead to 11-5. Lafayette responded with 3:26 left in the third thanks to Lehman’s second goal of the game.
“[This year] we put an emphasis on playing a full sixty minutes,” Kraham said. “One thing we’ve kind of struggled with in the past is the third quarter, so we’ve kind of been like trying to pride ourselves on coming out after halftime.”
Sophomore attacker Riley Sullivan and freshman Jack Irish added two more goals before the end of the third, but Loyola was still up by four.
“I think there were a bunch of guys who stepped up and played a really pivotal role,” Kraham said of his team’s third-quarter performance, shouting out both Sullivan and Irish as well as junior attacker Carter Cecil. “It was just time for them to step up when we needed them most, and they did their job.”
The Greyhounds opened up the final quarter with two goals. Sargent made his second goal with seven minutes left on the clock, bringing the deficit to 14-9. Loyola responded with one more goal before Sullivan and Kraham added goals of their own with less than 30 seconds left. The final score was 15-11 in favor of Loyola.
Freshman Joe Doherty, who was tabbed Goalkeeper of the Week, played the whole game. He made 14 saves compared to 12 saves from his Loyola counterpart.
Loyola outshot Lafayette 42-36, caused more turnovers (8-5), won more faceoffs (19-11) and got more ground balls (36-21).
“I think there was a lot of things that we did a lot better from our first game of the year, so definitely a lot of positives but definitely some stuff that we wish we could have back and take advantage of,” Kraham said.
Tonight at 6:30 p.m., the Leopards will face the Army Black Knights. Kraham said that the team plans to build on the successes from the Loyola game during its matchup in West Point, New York.
