Tim Reed/FOR THE POST Ohio and Denver players fight for the ball during Denver's 18-6 victory at Ohio's Shafer Street Field Saturday. It was Ohio's first and only home game this season. Ohio will play its next and final game of the season at Gannon on May 1.

Ohio head lacrosse coach Anne Moelk called it the best first half, no, the best half, no, the best lacrosse, she has seen the Bobcats play all year. But it all came in the first half of Ohio's only home game, an 18-6 loss for Ohio (1-4) Saturday against Denver (4-8).

Ohio played with its characteristic nervousness to start the game but, as always, played through it. More accurately, senior co-captain Lee McCloskey played through it.

With 17 minutes left in the first half, McCloskey answered Denver's four goals with one of her own.

"We work plays with three of us behind the net," McCloskey said. "And it just happens that sometimes if I see that it's an open opportunity, that it's a one-on-one to goal, that I'll just roll, and if I'm lucky it'll go in."

Luck went McCloskey's way two more times in the next three minutes to give her an unassisted hat trick. Those three goals helped not just her, but also the rest of the Bobcats, break out of their nervousness.

"She really sparks our team," Moelk said. "When she gets going and she scores a goal or she comes up with a ground ball, she sparks our team. Our team is inspired when Lee does something good."

While Denver added one more goal of its own, McCloskey handed center stage over to the freshmen.

Megan Sanders scored two goals and Lindsay Wiseman her only goal of the season to answer another Denver goal and to close out the half at a 6-6 tie.

"We did what we wanted to do, coming out hard," co-captain Marianne Beshara said. "We really played with the most confidence and the most intensity I think we've played all season."

That was the end of it for Ohio, though. Denver returned from the halftime intermission to score 12 more goals, and Ohio offered none.

When Denver shot ahead with the scoring in the second half, it looked like a repeat of the first half, and so the game still seemed within reach. But at some point, it all got away from Ohio.

The Bobcats played with, well, fewer Bobcats than did the Pioneers. Ohio has a small lineup, but that is no different than other games in which Ohio usually played a better second half.

"We let ourselves get frustrated this time, much more so than we have at all this year," Moelk said. "In our other games, we were down a lot, but we played heads-up throughout the whole game and never gave up. And we gave up a little bit in the second half, mostly I think because we knew we were in so tight and we watched it slip away. It being such a tight game sort of made it more of an opportunity to get disappointed in ourselves."

The difference for both Moelk and Beshara was the loss of a game that had been so close. Ohio usually was fighting to come from behind, not to maintain a strong position on the scoreboard.

"They came out a little bit more intense in the second half, a little bit more aggressive, with a little more of a physical game in the second half," Beshara said. "They just got a step on us and it was hard to get it back."

Despite the second half, Moelk wants her team to remember the first half and the effort that put Ohio in a position at halftime in which it had not often been.

What Moelk said was "literally the best half of lacrosse we have played this year" and a 6-6 tie at halftime put Ohio in the position to lose so much in the second half.