The first two years of Mike Lowe's career at Towson began with him lining up as a close defenseman before eventually switching to long-stick midfielder.
But this season, there are no plans to move Lowe as he has found a home with fellow starting defensemen JoJo Ostrander and Andrew Cordes. Lowe has left the long-pole duties to sophomore Tyler Mayes and juniors Pat Conroy and Joey Pfister. Lowe has started all four of the No. 15 Tigers' games at close defense, and he acknowledged that the stability has helped him gain a sense of comfort.
"The coaches have instilled a lot more confidence in me," the 6-foot-1, 185-pound junior said after Towson's 7-4 victory at Mount St. Mary's on Friday. "They told me earlier in the season, 'You're not going to be bumping up and down.' Conroy's playing great. Mayes is playing great. We had Pfister come in, and he's a transfer from Jacksonville. So they said to just focus on down low with JoJo and Cordes, and we've been able to feed off of each other. So it's worked out."
Lowe's numbers thus far – seven ground balls and three caused turnovers – are modest, but he has limited several dangerous opponents. He did not give up a shot to Johns Hopkins junior midfielder Connor Reed, who finished with a lone assist.
Lowe confined Georgetown senior attackman Bo Stafford to a single goal on six shots after he had scored a career-high four goals in the Hoyas' 14-12 loss to No. 2 and 2014 national runner-up Notre Dame on Feb. 14. And Lowe shut out Mount St. Mary's sophomore attackman Spencer Smith after he had scored four goals in the Mountaineers' 11-10 loss to Delaware on Tuesday.
Tigers coach Shawn Nadelen said he has been impressed with Lowe's development.
"After the Loyola debacle last year, we just bumped him back up and he looked more comfortable there," Nadelen said. "He's playing a little bit more under control. He's a pretty aggressive-minded kid and likes to create things. But he's a guy who understands what we want to do defensively and understands his ability in that defense and how it needs to work together. He plays with quite a bit of confidence, and that's good."
Lowe and the rest of Towson (3-1) will try to continue its winning ways against Navy (2-2) on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis. As well as Lowe has played, he said he is trying not to get ahead of himself.
"I just try to play within our defense, and luckily with these past couple games, I've been fortunate enough to have pretty good turnouts, making my man not be as effective as he usually is," he said. "I'm just going to keep doing that. Our defense is all about scrapping, and I'm just going to stick to our true colors, and hopefully, we can get some more W's."