On Saturday, Men’s Lacrosse hosted Dartmouth at Christy Mathewson-Memorial Stadium and beat Dartmouth 15-13, marking their first win of the season.
“It felt really good to get our first win of the year against a talented Dartmouth team,” John Young ’26 said. “We knew what we needed to fix from last week and had a great week of practice, so it was rewarding to see it all pay off on Saturday.”
The Bison came out strong with an early 5-0 lead. In the first four minutes of play, Will Hopkins ’26 scored three goals. Hopkins scored on back-to-back possessions at the 13:22 and 12:41 marks to give the Bison a 2-0 lead. Then Chris Begier ’26 scored at 12:32, Hopkins again at 11:39, then Hans Huber ’27 at 10:43.
Cam Doolan ’25 assisted two of Hopkins’ early goals and seven other Bucknell players tallied assists in the game.
One minute into the second quarter, Connor Davis ’25 scored, but then Dartmouth responded with three unanswered goals. Doolan and Huber scored on back-to-back possessions in the final minutes of the half to give the Bison a 9-6 lead heading into halftime.
In the third and fourth quarters Bucknell kept the lead but Dartmouth crept back.
Dartmouth was able to cut their deficit to a single goal on two occasions, including a late 6-2 run in the second half that cut Bucknell’s lead to 14-13 with under five minutes to play.
With only 1:19 to go, Davis scored a huge diving goal. This grew the Bison lead to 15-13, and marked a hat trick for Davis.
The Bison won the shot category 44-32 and capitalized on one of their three man-up chances. Brendan Coyle ’24 went 50% on faceoffs and Max Nolan ’25 made eight saves in net. Additionally, the Bison registered a 38-32 advantage in ground balls and won eight of 10 draws.
Dutch Furlong ’24 ended the game with two points and Coyle had a season-high nine ground balls. Will Pickering ’26 and Luke Brunner ’27 both supplied four as well. Davis now has two hat tricks on the season totaling 10 goals, while Hopkins is the second Bison to score five goals in a game this year.
Next weekend on Saturday, Feb. 24, Bucknell will travel to Wilton, CT to face Harvard at a neutral site.
