The men’s lacrosse team could not recover after a poor first half against Navy, falling to the Midshipmen by a score of 14-8 on Friday. The loss dropped the team to sixth place in the Patriot League, good for the final postseason spot with just two conference matchups left in the season.
Navy (3-2 Patriot League, 7-4 overall) got out to a red-hot start, registering four goals in the opening minutes of the first quarter to put the Leopards (3-3 Patriot League, 7-4 overall) into an early hole.
“I think we had a good plan going in, I think it came down to execution,” junior goalie Joe Doherty said. “We didn’t execute in the first couple minutes there, and it kind of set us back a little bit, made it tough the rest of the game.”
Freshman midfielder Joseph Duggan would get the Leopards on the board, receiving the ball from deep and driving at the Navy defense before lashing a shot past the Midshipmen goalkeeper. Navy would grab one more goal before the frame ended, sending the teams into the first interval at 5-1.
It was more one-way traffic from the Midshipmen as the second quarter began, quickly tallying four goals within the first five minutes of the period to take a 9-1 lead. Senior attacker and the Leopards’ leading goalscorer Riley Sullivan would find his 26th goal of the season to grab the Leopards’ second of the game, but the Maroon and White still faced a significant deficit heading into halftime, down 9-2.
The Leopards would scratch back in the second half. After freshman attacker Benjamin DiBattista’s goal was canceled out by a Navy score to make it a 10-3 game, Doherty scored his first-ever collegiate goal.
“It was kind of funny,” Doherty said. “The other team was 10-man riding, so I was just trying to clear the ball and honestly just trying to get it over the crossbar so we can back up the shot, but it ended up going in.”
Doherty caught the Navy goaltender out of position and fired the ball the length of the field to make it a 10-4 game. Freshman attacker Joshua Heaney would find the Leopards’ fifth goal with a bouncing shot off of a feed from senior midfielder Liam Sargent.
“We didn’t want to get pushed around anymore,” Doherty said. “We just gave it our all and just stopped worrying about score and just playing hard.”
Navy would find the final goal of the quarter, making it a 11-5 game going into the final frame. The two teams would cancel each other out in the fourth quarter with each side registering three goals. Junior midfielder Jack Irish, freshman midfielder Mason Hill and junior defender Lukas DiGiovanni accounted for the Leopard tallies. Ultimately, the slow start proved to be too much for the Maroon and White, as they were comfortably beaten despite their second-half improvement.
Looking to bounce back from Friday’s loss, the Leopards will play host to top seed and No. 15 ranked Boston University (4-1 Patriot League, 8-3 overall) for Senior Day on Saturday, before a crucial matchup against Lehigh (3-2 Patriot League, 4-7 overall) in two weeks.
Benjamin White ’27 contributed reporting.
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the men’s lacrosse team had not reached the playoffs since 2010. The team reached the playoffs in 2023.
