The Quinnipiac Bobcats took another crushing blow to their playoff hopes on Saturday, suffering a 14-13 overtime loss against the Iona Gaels to keep them in a tie with Manhattan for last place in the conference.

“I absolutely loved our fight today as a team. We dug ourselves a couple of holes but we were able to battle ourselves back into it,” said head coach Jordan Christopher following the game.

The Bobcats stunned Iona with two quick goals out of the gate from sophomore attack Kate Bendowski and junior attack Abby Wise. However, the Gaels would fire back with four goals in four minutes, led by senior attack Micaela FitzPatrick who accounted for two of the four goals. 

Quinnipiac would score the next three goals en route to a 5-4 lead at the end of the first period.

The Bobcats’ lead would be short lived however. Early in the second period, Gael sophomore attack Maliya Haddock would record a hat trick with three unassisted goals. Haddock finished the day with an impressive five goals to her name. Quinnipiac would outscore Iona following Haddock’s hat trick but it was not enough to retain a lead as the Bobcats entered halftime trailing 8-7.

Quinnipiac’s struggles continued into the third period as they found themselves down by four goals late in after FitzPatrick netted her third goal of the game to make it 13-9 in the final minute. Just 19 seconds later, Abby Wise would pull the Bobcats back within three goals to get out of the third period with a score of 13-10. 

Things went down to the wire in the fourth period with Quinnipiac shutting out Iona for the entirety of the period and scoring two late goals to bring themselves within a goal during the final few minutes. 

In the final 20 seconds, the Bobcats called a timeout leaving Christopher one last chance to draw something up to extend the game. With just four seconds left, junior midfielder EllaGrace Delmond put a shot past Iona’s sophomore goalkeeper Lauren Sweeney to extend the game to an extra frame.

With Quinnipiac still celebrating the timely goal that saved them the game, the Gaels got to work in overtime and took possession early. It only took 45 seconds into overtime to decide things when FitzPatrick netted her fourth and final goal of the game to make it 14-13.

For the Bobcats, a four goal game from Delmond and a hat trick from Wise wasn’t enough to help them pull off the upset against the third-place Gaels. However, their playoff hopes are still alive. They will have a tall task ahead of them, but if the Bobcats can manage to win-out the regular season, against the likes of second place Siena and third place Niagara, they will at least have a chance of cracking the postseason.