Knocking off the rust

It wasn’t going to happen. Not this time.

For the fifth time in six games, the No. 13 Boston University lacrosse team found itself in a hole after a difficult first half on Saturday. This time the Terriers had fallen behind 5-2 on the road against Binghamton University in the team’s America East opener.

But a combined six second-half goals by senior captains McKinley Curro and Traci Landy helped lead the Terriers (5-4, 1-0) to a season-high nine second-stanza tallies en route to an 11-8 victory over the Bearcats (0-6, 0-1).

“They were huge,” said BU coach Liz Robertshaw. “In that first half, they were really talking to the team, being really passionate about getting on the board. But in the second half, they finally took it upon themselves to just do it. That’s something I’ve asked of them all year, and on Saturday, we really saw it.”

Senior goalkeeper Rachel Klein also took a lead-by-example approach.

After recording a season-low one save and allowing nine goals before being pulled in last week’s 11-9 loss to Yale University, Klein found a way to rebound against Binghamton, making nine saves on 17 shots. During the second-half comeback, Klein and the rest of the Terrier defense shut down the Bearcat offense to the tune of three goals on eight shots.

“Yale was just one bad game, and I’ll take that,” Robertshaw said. “It was just an off day, which you’re going to have over the course of a season. Now, she’s back to seeing the ball well and making the big saves that we knew she could make.”

Although they broke through in the second half, the Terriers struggled in the first half with the same problems that have plagued the team halfway through its regular-season schedule.

After freshman BU midfielder Kristen Mogavero got the game’s scoring started 24 seconds into the contest, Binghamton went on a 5-1 run over the half’s remaining 29:36. Over those first 30 minutes, junior attacker Ali Castiglie netted three goals, all unassisted.

Robertshaw said she could see that her team was going to have a difficult time early before the opening draw.

“Not getting ready for games mentally is what has hurt us,” Robertshaw said. “[On Saturday,] I saw that we were pretty quiet off the bus, and I knew we just weren’t going to be ready to go. We need to do a better job preparing for every game, and I don’t think we did that going into Binghamton.”

The Terriers were finally able to gain their footing though in the opening minutes of the second half. Two goals by Curro and another by Landy tied the game at five in the half’s first five minutes. After a goal by Binghamton freshman attacker Lindsay Angelilo restored the Binghamton lead, BU scored five unanswered goals, topped off by Curro’s fourth goal on a free-position shot, to give the Terriers a solid four-goal lead with only minutes to go.

The eventual game-winner was the second goal of the afternoon for Mogavero, who is quietly having a solid freshman campaign. The free-position goal was her eighth goal of the season, good enough for fifth on the team in goals behind Landy (20), Curro (17), sophomore midfielder Hannah Frey (11) and freshman attacker Danielle Etrasco (10).

“[Mogavero’s] doing what I expected her to this season,” Robertshaw said. “I told some of our younger players that if you’re a good lacrosse player, regardless of age, I’m going to expect big things out of you, and I think her and [Etrasco] both fit that description. She’s capable of scoring multiple goals a game, so while I’m very pleased with how she’s playing, this is what I thought she was capable of all along.”