The weather was terrible, but the lacrosse was outstanding on Saturday.

In the rain in Amherst, Mass., it all came down to the final seconds as the Georgetown men’s team took the University of assachusetts down to the wire. With less than a minute remaining, the Hoyas (8-3, 3-1 ECAC) had a chance to send the game into overtime, but could not find the back of the net and fell to the inutemen (9-2, 4-1 ECAC) 13-12 for their first ECAC loss since 2003.

Georgetown fell from No. 3 to No. 6 after the defeat while UMass improved from No. 9 to No. 8.

“We fully expected UMass to be as a good as they were,” Georgetown Head Coach Dave Urick said. “They are a tournament-caliber team. It was a great game.”

In the final minute of the match, senior mid Andy Corno won his 19th faceoff of the game to give the Hoyas control and a chance to score the game-tying goal. Georgetown took a timeout and drew up a play, but UMass, the fifth-ranked defense in the country, did not let the Hoyas have a good look at the goal. With 10 seconds on the clock, junior mid Pete Cannon took the Hoyas’ final shot, but UMass senior keeper Bill Schell, the third-best goalie in the nation with a 6.63 goals against average, came up with the save and the win for the Minutemen.

“It wasn’t exactly what we had drawn up,” Urick said of the final play. “It was not a great scoring opportunity – not the kind you want at that stage of the game – but we were in a good position to score and it was an exciting ending.”

The Hoyas put themselves in position to tie it up only after crawling out from an early deficit. UMass notched the first goal of the game in the eighth minute, then added another tally in the 10th minute to go up 2-0. Cannon answered for the Hoyas with his first of five goals on the afternoon, but the Minutemen responded with two goals in the next four minutes to go back up by three. Georgetown freshman attack Matt McBride got one back in the final minute of the first quarter and the period ended with the Hoyas down 4-2.

The Minutemen scored the first goal of the second stanza, and from there the two teams traded goals back and forth. Junior attack Derek Mills scored a man-up goal for the Hoyas, which was followed by a score from UMass senior mid Chris Doyle.

Two Hoya attackers, freshman Brendan Cannon and junior Sean Denihan, tallied the next two points, followed by two unassisted goals from Minuteman junior attack Sean Morris. In the last 15 seconds of the half Pete Cannon added another Hoya goal while orris scored his third of the period with one second on the clock.

At the end of the second quarter, the two teams had combined for nine goals, and UMass remained on top 9-6.

Coming out of halftime the Hoyas battled back, holding the inutemen scoreless while notching three goals to tie the game going into the final period, 9-9.

In the fourth quarter the Hoyas struck first. Pete Cannon found the back of the cage on an assist from senior mid Nick Miaritis to give Georgetown its first lead of the game. But the fourth quarter belonged to UMass, who dominated as Georgetown had in the third, tallying four unanswered goals of their own to regain the lead. Pete Cannon had two late goals to put the tie within Georgetown’s reach, but the last goal would not come and the Hoyas had to settle for the one-goal loss, 13-12.

“It was a hard-fought game and either team could have won,” UMass Head Coach Greg Cannella, this week’s U.S. Lacrosse coach of the week, said. “I give Georgetown a lot of credit for being a perennial top-10 team. They get the best effort from everybody they play.”

In a match that could have gone either way, the statistics were characteristically close. Georgeotown had one more shot than UMass, 41-40, but the Minutemen put more on goal, 26-20. Georgetown senior keeper Rich D’Andrea had 13 saves on the day, while Schell notched eight stops for UMass.

Overall, Corno, the top faceoff man in the country, was dominant at the “X,” winning 18-of-28 faceoffs for Georgetown. In the fourth quarter, however, Corno won only 3-of-8.

“I think he got a little tired,” Urick said of Corno. “If I could do one thing differently, I might give Andy a little bit of a rest. That was a lot of faceoffs.”

The victory put the Minutemen, who are undefeated in April, in sole possession of first place in the ECAC. The Hoyas sit right behind them and will have a chance to move back into a tie for first on Saturday when they play host to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights (4-7, 1-3 ECAC).

“Rutgers is a very good team,” Urick said. “This is not the season they had hoped for, and they can salvage some of it if they can grab a win at Georgetown, and we can’t allow that to happen.”

Faceoff is set for 1 p.m. on North Kehoe Field.