The Hofstra University men’s lacrosse team suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Marist College Red Foxes on Saturday, Feb. 24. It was a close tug-of-war matchup, but in the end, Marist came out on top 12-10 at the James M. Shuart Stadium.

“Tough one today,” said Hofstra head coach Seth Tierney. “Obviously, you always credit the winner, but I just think we made some mistakes. We lost that game, like, we lost that game.”

The Pride falls to 3-2 overall on the season, while Marist improves to 3-1.

Marist began the scoring in the first quarter, as Vinny Butrico whizzed a shot past Hofstra goalkeeper Sean Henderson just under four minutes in. Anthony Mollica only needed 18 seconds to tie the contest, scoring on a low shot from the left side. Less than a minute later, it was Justin Sykes who put his name on the scoresheet, firing a shot past off a quick pass.

The 2-1 lead for Hofstra lasted three minutes before the visitors tied it via Sean Mullen’s first goal of the game. Marist then took back the lead 25 seconds later thanks to Christian Colantonio’s score off the feed from Joshua Balcarcel. The quarter ended 5-2 with two more goals for Marist from Stephen Bickel and Keenan DeRaeve, both unassisted.

Almost 10 minutes had passed in the second quarter before Sykes scored his second goal, bouncing his ninth goal past Noble Smith. It was then Sam Lutfi, who was playing his first game of the season, took an unbalanced attempt on goal and ended up scoring to make it 5-4.

“[Lutfi] hadn’t played lacrosse in a long time,” Tierney said. “We thought he would give us a little bit of an edge with his quickness.”

With the score 5-4 at the start of the second half, almost five minutes went by until Bickel doubled Marist’s lead to 6-4 with an unassisted goal. The Pride roared back, as Rory Jones set up Hofstra’s leading scorer John Madsen to put the ball in the back of the net for the 17th time this season.

After Marist got two goals to start the fourth quarter, it was Colton Rudd and Turner who put Hofstra level with their opponents in a span of a minute and 16 seconds. Marist wasn’t fazed, however, and took a two-goal lead thanks to Mullan scoring his third and a second for Butrico.

While Madsen scored his third of the game to make it an 11-10 game, it was a costly error by Blake Cooling that allowed for Collin Patrick to score with five seconds left.

Despite the loss, this is now the fourth straight game for Madsen with three or more goals. He has now scored 17 of his 19 on the year in the last four contests he’s played in for Hofstra.

“[Madsen]’s compete level has always been there,” Tierney said. “You never have to worry that John Madsen’s going to show up. He shows up every time.”

Hofstra now has a difficult part of the schedule ahead of them, as the next game is on the road against Rutgers University.

“Whether we won today or not, the schedule is what it is,” Tierney added. “Rutgers is a really good team, but, again, all of these games are in preparation for conference play.”

Opening face-off against Rutgers is on Saturday, March 2, at 1 p.m.

 Photo courtesy of Hofstra Athletics/Evan Bernstein