Second half surge leads AMCATS past Bison, 7-5

PAXTON, Mass.  – Led by freshman netminder Joshua Giarratano (Warwick, RI) 16 saves, the Anna Maria College men's lacrosse team defeated Nichols College 7-5 on a windy and cold Thursday night at AMCAT Field. With the win the AMCATS improve to 2-2, while the Bison fall to 0-2 on the season. 

Senior's Chris Summers (Long Valley, NY) and Jason Baker (Billerica, MA) each potted two and Rob Henriques (Saugus, MA) added a goal and an assist to lead AMC to the victory.

The Bison were paced by freshman Brian Hancock's (Grafton, MA) four goals and Macauley Gillis' three assists.

The Bison took a 2-0 lead on a pair of goals from Hancock late in the first quarter. After being held scoreless in the first stanza the AMCATS bounced back to reel off three straight tallies. AMC  midfielder Henriques  and  senior David Marsh tipped the twine with unassisted goals while Chris Summers converted a pass from Henriques to score a man-up goal to take a 3-2 advantage with 12 minutes to play in the period.

Nichols responded with Hancock's third and fourth goals of the game to pull ahead 4-3, however Anna Maria's Baker tied the game at 4-4 with an unassisted score heading into halftime.

Both teams went scoreless in the third quarter, Giarratano was spectacular in net for the AMCATS stoning the Bison on back-to-back opportunities late in the period to keep the score deadlocked at 4 heading into the fourth.

Baker, after deking back and forth to create an opening, put the AMCATS ahead 5-4 just 30 seconds into the 4^th stanza. Teammate Chris Summers added the game-winning goal at the 11:25 mark to push the score to 6-4. The teams would trade goals down the stretch for the 7-5 final.

For the game, Nichols held the advantage in shots (35-23), and groundballs (36-33) while each team had eight faceoff wins.

 Anna Maria will return to action on Saturday afternoon when the travel to St. Joseph's College (ME) for their first GNAC match-up of the season.