Seider, White lead way in stunner
Tigers outscore Greyhounds 6-3 in second half, have 4-0 record for first time since 1992
Faced with its first halftime deficit of the young 2016 season, the Towson men’s lacrosse team didn’t blink.
Trailing 5-4, the No. 11 Tigers outscored No. 5 Loyola Maryland 6-3 in the second half to pull off a 10-8 upset before an announced 524 at Ridley Athletic Complex.
Junior attackman Joe Seider led all scorers with four goals and one assist as Towson (4- 0) ended an eightgame losing streak against the Greyhounds (3-1). The Tigers, who won in the series for the first time since Feb. 26, 2007, have opened a season with four straight victories for the first time since 1992.
“The guys came out here focused, great energy and earned a win against an
extremely tough team,” said coach Shawn Nadelen, who collected the first win against Loyola in his fiveyear tenure at Towson. “Loyola’s a terrific program, a terrific team that was obviously having a good start to the season. I thought our guys did a great job handling the start of the game, coming out fast and being able to keep the pedal down and earn a win against a team that has had the upper hand against us recently, which is not easy to do. But it’s a credit to our guys wanting to overcome that.”
The Tigers were sparked by the stellar play of goalkeeper Tyler White. The 6-foot-3, 230-pound redshirt senior made a season-high 16 saves, turning aside several of the Greyhounds’ high-percentage chances.
White’s size and performance appeared to cause several Loyola shooters to hesitate or reconsider when they had opportunities. Senior attackman Zach Herreweyers, who entered the game leading the Greyhounds in goals with nine, took nine shots, but failed to score for the first time since May10, 2014.
During one sequence early in the fourth quarter, junior attackman Zack Sirico threaded a pass to Herreweyers alone on the left crease, but his shot sailed over the cage.
“I like to think that I maybe skewed some of their shots a little bit and made them think before they shot,” White said. “But I think the defense in front of me today played extremely well and gave me favorable shots that I wanted to see. So that helped me a lot. I just put a complete game together today, which was huge because I haven’t in the past games.”
Freshman attackman Pat Spencer, who scored two goals for Loyola, said the team thought it had studied White.
“Even some of the shots we were going to aim for when we scouted him, he swept up,” said Spencer, a Davidsonville resident and Boys’ Latin graduate. “We thought we were pretty prepared. He played a heck of a game. He saved a lot of the shots that we thought were going to go, and sometimes it falls that way. We didn’t put our shots away.”
The Tigers got two third-quarter goals from Seider (Hereford) on assists from junior attackman Ryan Drenner (Westminster) and blanked Loyola, which had not been shut out in a period this season.
Towson opened the final quarter with goals from junior midfielder Tyler Young (Arundel) and senior midfielder Ben McCarty (South Carroll) to enjoy its largest lead at 8-5.
After goals from senior midfielder Tyler Albrecht and junior attackman Jordan Germershausen helped the Greyhounds close the gap to 8-7, McCarty scored again with five minutes left in regulation.
Loyola junior midfielder Brian Sherlock scored off a feed from junior midfielder Romar Dennis 41 seconds later, but a goal from senior attackman Spencer Parks (St. Paul’s) with 3:25 remaining closed out the scoring.
Drenner did not score a goal for the first time this season, but he did record a game-high three assists. Young added one goal and two assists, and junior faceoff specialist Alec Burckley won 12 of 21 draws and scooped up five ground balls.
Dennis led the Greyhounds with two goals and one assist, and Spencer and Germershausen each finished with two goals. But the team will have to recover quickly for Saturday’s road game at Patriot League rival Holy Cross.
“Learners or losers,” Loyola coach Charley Toomey said. “We’re either going to learn from this or we’re going to be losers. I know my team, and I know there were things that happened out there today that obviously we have to come back and we’ve got to watch film and we’ve got to learn from them. We’ve got to go to Holy Cross on short rest, and we’ve got to win a league game. That’s basically what we just talked about.”