Spencer’s big day powers Loyola

Sets NCAA assists mark, breaks own school record by cracking 100 points

Where there’s a will, there’s Pat Spencer.

Facing a four-goal deficit with a little more than 17 minutes left in what could have been the final men’s lacrosse game of his collegiate career, the senior attackman for Loyola Maryland took charge and propelled the No. 8 seed to a 15-13 win against Syracuse in an NCAA Division I tournament first-round game before an announced 3,568 at Ridley Athletic Complex in Baltimore on Saturday afternoon.

The Greyhounds improved to 12-4 and will meet the winner of Sunday’s game between No. 1 seed Penn State (14-1) and UMBC (7-8) in East Hartford, Conn., on Sunday, May 19 at either noon or 2:30 p.m.

The program’s third trip in the last four years to the quarterfinals was made possible largely by the play of Spencer, the Davidsonville resident and Boys’ Latin graduate who on Thursday became the sixth player in Tewaaraton Award history to be named a three-time finalist for the distinction that honors college lacrosse’s top player.

With Loyola trailing the Orange 12-8 with less than three minutes left in the third quarter, Spencer logged one goal and three assists to fuel a 7-0 run over a 16:12 span that the Greyhounds would not relinquish.

Spencer deflected a question about his personal motivations regarding the deficit, focusing instead on the 12member senior class.

“We’ve all talked about it all week,” he said. “We’ve got a really close group of seniors, and life moves on after this. We won’t get to see each other as much. We’re with each other all the time, and the talk of the week was seven more days. We wanted seven more days together.”

Sophomore attackman Aidan Olmstead contributed two goals and two assists, senior midfielder John Duffy and freshman midfielder Chase Scanlan added two goals and one assist each, and sophomore attackman Kevin Lindley and senior midfielder P.J. Brown scored two goals each. But there was no mistaking that every time Loyola possessed the ball on offense, it ran through Spencer’s stick.

“That’s been our M.O. all year,” coach Charley Toomey said. “Get the ball to Pat, and then let’s figure out what we need to do in that moment.”

The 6-foot-3, 205-pound Spencer outplayed Syracuse’s 5-9, 185-pound redshirt junior defenseman Nick Mellen.