By Reed Dempsey
Contributing Writer
The men’s lacrosse team dropped its second straight contest last Saturday to No. 11 UMass by a final score of 11-9.
Led by the highly touted junior Will Manny, the Minutemen opened the scoring three and a half minutes in and quickly followed with a second goal to go up two on the Bison. Just a minute later, the Orange and Blue cut the score in half with a goal by David Dickson ’15, the first of his career. With just under five minutes left in the first quarter, Nick Gantsoudes ’12 fed Chase Bailey ’13 to tie the game at two apiece.
The teams traded tallies early in the second quarter before the Minutemen stormed ahead to a 5-3 halftime lead. According to Billy Eisenreich ’12, the Bison had difficulties executing their specialty plays.
“Man up, man down and clearing were all uncharacteristically bad for us,’’ Eisenreich said.
Coming out of the half, Kyle Smith of the Minutemen deposited his third goal of the game to bring the UMass lead to 6-3. Four minutes later, Eisenreich’s unassisted tally brought the deficit back to two.
The Minutemen responded with two goals to open their biggest lead of the day. But as in the season opener, the Bison fought hard until the last whistle. It took just over a minute for the Orange and Blue to respond with two goals of their own. Peter Burke ’14 scored first followed by Dickson’s second of the day.
To start the fourth quarter, Manny scored back-to-back goals bringing the lead over the Bison to four. Heading into the game, the Bison knew they faced a tough task defending Manny. Defenseman Mike Huffner ’13 said the team needed to be “mindful of where he was on the field at all times.’’ Unfortunately, the attackman was able to take advantage of holes in the Bison defense, amassing seven points during the game, bringing his season tally to 16.
With under 10 minutes left in regulation the teams traded goals to bring the score to 11-7. A few minutes later, Burke and Eisenreich added a goal each to cut the lead back to two.
Any attempt to bring this game to overtime was thwarted as the Minutemen shut down the Bison for the final four minutes of the game.
The Bison will look to rebound from their rough start with a win at No. 9 Villanova this Saturday.