On Saturday, April 14, the Colgate men’s lacrosse team honored its 11 seniors in a pregame ceremony before taking on the Holy Cross Crusaders. Unfortunately, Colgate suffered a tough loss after a hard fought battle against the visiting team, moving their record to 2-5 in Patriot League play and 6-6 overall. Holy Cross improved to  2-5 in the league and 4-8 overall.

 The game consisted of several offensive runs for each team, each responding to the other’s success. The Raiders started ahead in the first quarter, scoring two goals while their opponent only managed one, before Holy Cross came back and scored the next three goals. However, Colgate didn’t let up, and answered back with the next three goals. The game continued with this back and-forth action. Holy Cross responded to Colgate’s three goals with another three of their own.

Yet again, Colgate came back and had four straight goals, but Holy Cross was able to answer back. They scored five straight goals, an impressive set, allowing them to pull out a victory of 12-10 in the last few minutes of the game. This comeback from Holy Cross started out with a goal from sophomore attack player Sean Mullaney with 3:39 left, which put Holy Cross two behind Colgate. The Crusaders continued this streak and won four consecutive faceoffs, which translated into four critical goals to win the game. Mullaney got a hat trick in this comeback series while sophomore attackman Kevin Kodzis scored his fourth goal of the game and sophomore attackman Justin Lynskey scored a goal with just 1:17 remaining.

 On Colgate’s offensive end, senior midfielder Joe Delaney stood out with impressive play on his Senior Day, scoring four goals for the Raiders. This marked Delaney’s third hat trick of the season.

“You’ve got to credit Joe Delaney. He did a good job. We just needed a little bit more,” head coach Mike Murphy said.

Senior attackman Chase Wittich and sophomore midfielder Griffin Brown both commented on the team’s performance on Saturday, voicing disappointment with Raiders’ effort.

“It was a tough one for us. We talk about starting strong and finishing stronger, but we just did not do that. We have one more game left and we are looking forward to our next opportunity to play against a Patriot League opponent. Our sights are still set on the Patriot League tournament,” Wittich said. 

Brown echoed these sentiments.

“It was a tough loss but we still control our own destiny in the Patriot League. Hopefully we can bounce back next week,” Brown said.

 The result of this game created a four-way tie for fifth place in the Patriot League between Colgate, Army, Boston University and Holy Cross. Each team has a record of 2-5 in the league. The Raiders will take on Lafayette on Friday night at 7:00 p.m. under the lights at home. Lafayette is currently 0-7 in league play. Army will play against Loyola and Boston University will face Holy Cross. The top six teams in the league qualify for tournament play, which begins on April 24.

Contact Kate Kelly at [email protected].