This past weekend, the Colgate men’s lacrosse team put up an impressive fight against the No. 1-ranked Navy Midshipmen in Annapolis, Maryland. Unfortunately, when time ran out the Raiders trailed the Midshipmen 14-16, and Navy took home the win. 

During the first period of the contest, the Raiders and the Midshipmen both came away with two goals, ending the first quarter in a tie. The first goal of the game was scored by Navy senior attackman Dave Little off an assist from junior midfielder Ryan Wade. Sophomore midfielder Parker Baddley tallied the first goal for the Raiders and his second goal of the season with 9:25 left to play in the first quarter. Wade scored again for Navy with his sixth goal of the season with just over two minutes remaining in the first quarter. Sophomore midfielder Griffin Brown tallied his 26th goal of the season off a feed from sophomore attackman Nicky Petkevich, with just 21 seconds left in the first quarter. 

Although the first quarter ended with a tie, the Midshipmen were able to pull away from the Raiders in the second quarter, scoring six goals, five back-to-back, while the Raiders were only able to capitalize on three. Colgate first-year attackman Mike Hawkins, leading the team in goals this season, tallied the first goal of the second quarter off another assist from Petkevich with 13:16 left to play. The Midshipmen then went on a six-goal run until Colgate first-year attacker James Caddigan Jr. scored his seventh goal of the season off an assist from junior midfielder Will Blumenberg with just eight seconds left before halftime. 

During the third quarter of play Colgate answered back, putting up two goals while Navy only put up one, going into the fourth quarter trailing 7-9. The third quarter remained goal-less for almost 10 minutes until Petkevich scored unassisted. Just 30 later, Navy answered back with first-year attacker Christian Daniel scoring on a man-up play. 30 seconds later, Colgate senior midfielder Joe Delaney tallied his twelfth goal of the season. 

The Raiders and the Midshipmen both finished the final quarter with three goals, Navy collecting the first two goals of the quarter. Caddigan put another point up for the Raiders with 10:58 left to play. With two minutes and 30 seconds remaining, Navy scored again, followed by Hawkins putting up another goal for the Raiders just one minute later. At the game’s conclusion, Brown scored his twenty-seventh goal of the season right as the clock ran out. Overall, Junior goalkeeper Connor Mullen recorded eight saves for the Raiders, and Blumenberg had six ground balls and three caused turnovers for the Raiders.  

“You’ve got to play 60 minutes. That second quarter really put us behind the eight ball. In terms of giving them transition, we knew coming in that we had to be able to stop that. It was bad discipline from our team but credit Navy; they ran the field great and did what they needed to do,” head coach Mike Murphy said.

Colgate is now ranked fifth in the league. The Raiders return for another conference game next Saturday, April 14 against No. 8-ranked Holy Cross at Andy Kerr Stadium at 2 p.m.

Contact Lexi Luthringer at [email protected].