The Centre men's lacrosse team used five goals from Matt Hughes and a dominant second half performance to top Birmingham-Southern 8-4 in a Southern Athletic Association game Friday at Farris Stadium.

Hughes, a junior from Vero Beach, Fla., scored four of his five goals in the second half, and the Colonels pulled away by keeping Birmingham-Southern off the scoreboard for the final 22 minutes of play. Austin Zehnder (Prospect, Ky.) scored twice for Centre, while Wes Hardman (Narragansett, R.I.) had a single goal. David Arnold and Peyton Heard had two goals each to account for all of the BSC scoring.

The game was closely contested throughout the first half, with Centre taking an early lead when Seth Gray (Louisville, Ky.) assisted on a Zehnder goal. The Panthers answered with two goals, but Hughes ran through the middle of the BSC defense and scored to even the score at 2-2 with just two seconds left in the first quarter. The Panthers went back up 3-2 on a goal by Arnold halfway through the second quarter, but the Colonels again struck with time running out as Hardman scored on an assist from Dustin Cowell (Culver, Ind.) with 15 seconds left in the half. 

Heard put the Panthers up a final time at 4-3, but the Colonels took control of the game from that point. Hughes scored twice and assisted on a Zehnder goal in a span of just 1:50, turning a 4-3 deficit to a 6-4 lead. Two more fourth quarter goals by Hughes helped put the game away for Centre.

Centre took 42 shots to Birmingham-Southern's 24, including a 23-12 edge in the second half. The Colonels also doubled up the Panthers' ground ball total 34-17 with a 20-6 second half edge. Centre also held a 9-5 advantage in faceoffs and turned the ball over 15 times to the Panthers' 20.

Bryce McCoy (Hudson, Ohio) made 10 saves in goal in the win, while Conor Perine had 12 stops in the loss for Birmingham-Southern.

With the victory, Centre climbs above .500 both overall and in SAA play, moving to 5-4 on the season and 2-1 in the SAA. Birmingham-Southern drops to 6-4 overall and 2-1 in the league. The Colonels are back in action again on Sunday when they host Millsaps at Farris Stadium at 11 a.m.