As much as the next coach, Tony Seaman abhors losing. Yet, he was well-aware of what he was doing when he arranged for the Tigers to open this season with games against the likes of No. 1 Virginia, No. 5 Maryland, No. 7 Loyola and No. 16 Stony Brook.
"I thought it prepared us," Seaman said Monday after Towson opened its Colonial Athletic Conference schedule with a 9-7 victory over Delaware on Saturday. "We came in 1-5, handled our jobs, played well, and enjoyed the afternoon. it was a terrific feeling. You're always questioning yourself when you have that many losses. You think you might be good and you think you might be able to compete, but you're just so tired and frustrated with near-losses. So to actually win was wonderful. Now you have to maintain that. That's the difficult part."
After spending last week lobbying his players to be more accurate with their shots, Seaman was pleased to see the offense put 21 of 36 shots (58.3 percent) on net. But he was especially delighted that the defense shut out a Blue Hens squad that had been averaging 11.7 goals per game over the final 28 minutes, 59 seconds of the second half.
Sophomore defenseman Marc Ingerman held senior attackman Curtis Dickson (36 goals in nine games) to two goals, freshman defenseman Ben Strauss limited sophomore attackman Grant Kaleikau to two assists, and senior defenseman Joe Wascavage allowed senior midfielder Martin Cahill (23 goals) to score just twice.
"I just think we played good individual defense, on-the-ball," Seaman said. "They're a team that relies on their individual parts to get it done for them. The Dickson kid's scored a lot of goals, the Cahill kid's scored a lot of goals. ... So that was a really good effort on our part throughout the day."