Moon Township– The Robert Morris men’s lacrosse team continued their 2024 campaign with their home opener for the season as the Colonials (1-2) welcomed a Canisius (2-2) team they had beaten the last three times leading up to this game. Unfortunately, the Colonial’s efforts would fall short as they would drop the home opener in overtime by a final score of 9-8.

The Colonials showed a ton of resilience in this game as they found themselves down early after fifteen minutes of play. “I told the guys that it is a sixty-minute game.” Third year head coach Craig McDonald said. “We have to take it one period at a time, it’s a long game, and we can control the game when we need to.”

The Colonials won the next two quarters and clawed their way back into the game thanks to Elliot Holden, who had four goals on the day. Both teams would trade the momentum, each scoring three goals a piece in the fourth quarter. We would see the game go past the 60 minutes and overtime would be needed. The overtime however only lasted a minute as Hunter Parucki, after drawing a field, buried a shot past Nate Fechter for the win and spoiled the Colonial’s home opener.

The defense of the Colonials was played well by Coach McDonald, who thought “that the offense was stagnant today. I felt like we only had one guy crashing the net, and we never moved on offense. I would have liked to see better-quality shots as well. I didn’t feel like we took better shots than Canisius, which cost us the game”.

Tommy Kunz was a brick wall for the Golden Griffins, as Kunz mostly saved everything that came his way. He had 15 saves in the day on twenty-three shots faced. Kunz was tough to break into the net, and the Colonials felt they could not answer the call to get it past Kunz.

The next stop for the Colonials is a road matchup on March 2nd against Hobart College. The Colonials have won the last three of four matchups against Hobart College, but dropped the most recent game last year by 14-12.