GRANTHAM, PA - The Messiah men's lacrosse team picked up another conference win against the Hood College Blazers this evening by a score of 14-10. Owen Joyce led the Falcons with four goals and four assists.

The win improves their record to 8-8 and their conference mark moves to 4-3. They will travel to Eastern for the final game of the regular season on April 30, at 1:00 PM.

First Half
Messiah jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the first quarter thanks to goals from Owen Joyce (2), Sam Stone and Aaron Shaw (2) before Hood got on the board with under three minutes remaining in the first quarter. Three more Messiah goals in the second quarter made it an 8-1 game with under nine minutes to go in the half. Branson, Pokrivka and Mellor connected on those three goals. Hood would make it a one goal game by rattling off six straight goals to cut the deficit to one before Branson scored with a minute remaining in the half. The Falcons took that 9-7 lead into the break.

Second Half
Hood struck first in the second half making it a one score game again, but Seth Libby made that a two goal lead with a goal a couple minutes into the third quarter. Messiah tacked on two more goals from Libby again and then Sam Stone to make it a 12-8 game headed to the fourth quarter. Joyce would add two more goals in the quarter to make it four goals in the game and gave Messiah the official win 14-10.\

Stats
Joyce led the team in goals with four, while Shaw, Branson, Libby and Stone each had two goals in the game. Joyce also had four assists in the game. Pokrivka led the team in ground bails with 11 and won 10/17 face-offs. McCuller also caused four turnovers.

As a team, Messiah took ten more shots than Hood, (37-27) and had ten more ground balls (40-30), Messiah also caused eight more turnovers in the game as well, (16-8).

Next
The win brings the Falcons record to 8-8 and their conference record to 4-3. They will travel to Eastern on April 30, for a game at 1:00 PM.

Messiah has also clinched either the four or the five seed in the upcoming MAC Commonwealth Playoffs set to begin next week. That play-in game will determined after this weekend of conference matches.