This Saturday, the No. 20 Harvard men’s lacrosse team learned an important lesson: even if you outshoot an opponent by a 2 to 1 margin, it doesn’t matter if you can’t get one in.

The Crimson (2-1) faced off against Fairfield (3-2) in its first away game of the season and dropped the contest 7-6 due to an impressive showing by the Stags.

“Their goalie played very well,” tri-captain midfielder Doug Kocis said. “It’s a combination of that and us shooting very poorly. When you shoot 40 shots, you need to score more than six goals.”

Harvard was especially frustrated by defeat after creating many scoring opportunities for themselves during the entire game.

“They were definitely a little more excited for the game than we were,” tri-captain defender Brian Wannop said. “It’s a game we probably should have won.”

The Crimson outshot the Stags 24-11 in the second half alone, but Fairfield goalie Michael Kruger was virtually impenetrable.

“We took some bad outside shots that were easily blocked by their goalie,” Wannop said. “As the game went on, we were rushing and taking poor shots.”

Kruger ended up making four of his 20 saves for the game in the last two minutes of play as Harvard tried to stay alive.

The Stags committed a turnover with 30 seconds left in the fourth period, allowing the Crimson one last chance to tie the game and bring it into overtime. But following the trend of the rest of the game, Kruger made an impressive save against freshman attackman Zach Widbin, who tried for the goal.

“I don’t think anybody thought that we weren’t going to score because we had four or five shots in the last two minutes,” Wannop said. “But their goalie came up huge and we just got unlucky in our shots.”

Harvard had to play catch-up almost immediately out of the gate as it was only able to take the lead once.

The only time the Crimson was able to go ahead in the game was when it went on a three-goal streak in the first period.

Fairfield had already started out strong, with a goal only eight seconds into the game, and followed with another at 13:52 in the period to nudge the score to 2-0.

“They came out right off the bat and scored and it caught us off guard a little bit,” Kocis said. “The whole first half, we were playing catch-up. With a team like [the Stags] if you keep them hanging around they are eventually going to score and put the pressure on you.”

But Harvard was not about to let Fairfield dominate the field, as the Crimson came back late in the first period.