By Ajan Caneda

Staff Writer

Seeking its first victory of the year, the women’s lacrosse team fell 13-12 at Manhattan Sunday afternoon during the squad’s closest game of the year. Katelyn Miller ’14 scored four goals to lead the Bison, while Madison Hurwitz ’13 and Arriana Sajjad ’15 each scored two goals.

In both the first and second half, the Bison fell behind big early and needed to rally. Manhattan opened up a 7-2 lead to start the game, but the Orange and Blue scored four straight goals in the last 6:40 of the first half to reduce the deficit to one at the break.

The Lady Jaspers rebuilt their lead to 12-8 in the first 10 minutes of the second half, but after a 10-minute stretch in which neither team scored, the Bison began a rally that pulled them back to within one with 8:54 left. Manhattan scored again with 5:43 left, and the Bison answered with 2:52 remaining but could not score the final goal to complete the comeback.

The Bison played much better than in their first three games, each of which they lost by 14 goals or more.

“It was really good for us to start out against tough teams like Duke and Penn State to be able to see where we stand as a team and how hard we have to work to get at the level they are,” Sajjad said. “However, now we get to look forward to conference games where the outcomes really matter and the competition gets more intense. We’re excited to start focusing on the competition in practice and buckling down.”

That being said, the Orange and Blue know that there is a lot to improve on in the coming weeks.

“Coming out of that game, I would say that we definitely need to come out stronger instead of constantly turning it on in the second half,” Sajjad said. “Midfield transition was especially good, and that’s one of the key things that we have been working on as a team, so it was great to see us come together in that aspect. We definitely do have some more things we need to work on however. Defense needs to work on bumping cutters and attack needs to work on shot placement.”

The Bison have two home games, Saturday versus George Washington and Monday versus Presbyterian, before their first Patriot League game of the season against Navy.