CHARLESTON, S.C. - The Lander Men's Rugby team fought back from a 15 point deficit at halftime but could not complete the comeback as they fell to The Citadel by a score of 18-15 on Sunday afternoon.

The first half was tightly contested, despite several handling errors and a couple of costly penalties by the visiting Bearcats.  In the 39^th minute, Lander got on the scoreboard with a Brad McCaslan penalty kick to make the score 3-11 with The Citadel up. 

Unfortunately, the Bulldogs were able to get a converted try on the last play of the half, after a Bearcat turnover.  The halftime score was 3-18 in favor of The Citadel.

The second half was total 180 from the first half.  Lander scored in the corner on a lineout maul, with Konnor Richardson placing the ball for the unconverted try in the 52^nd minute.

In the 70^th minute the visitors scored with a linebreak by Ethan Richardson and McCaslan followed it with a slotted conversion.  The momentum was all Bearcats in the second half despite the only two trys, and it appeared Lander would mount a comeback victory.  The blue and gold was 15-18 with time to score again.

With less than 5 minutes to remain in the match a player from The Citadel inadvertently collided with the referee and injured her where she could not finish the match.  After a 20-minute delay and some confusion, a different referee was chosen to finish the match. 

Unfortunately, with score stayed and the home team won 18-15.

Coach Billings had this to say after the match. "I was very proud of my men today for their second half performance.  I told them at the half, that we were beating ourselves in the first half and that we were the better team.  If we can just play simple rugby, we will come back and win this game.  We were on track to do that, and we came up short in the end, despite not winning, I'm proud of their resilience and attitude to rebound in the second half.  A lot of teams will fuss, and finger point in that type of situation and our men rallied and made it a close match that could've gone our way.  We will continue to work and come back better"

On the day we had several linebreaks from Richardson, consistent play from forwards Ethan Syswerda, Blaine Tomas (Greenwood, S.C.), and Cleon Payne (Charlotte, N.C.).  In the backs McCaslan, Joaquin Villegas, and Ethan Richardson were solid on attack and defense.

After this weekend, the Bearcats have a couple of weeks off before they face UNC Charlotte at home Oct 21 for a 1p kickoff.