As frustrating as Saturday's 9-2 walloping from Hofstra was, Towson still has a path to the top seed and homefield advantage in the upcoming Colonial Athletic Association tournament.
Defeat Drexel (6-7 overall and 2-2 league) – which got upended by Massachusetts, 12-9 – on Saturday, and the No. 12 Tigers (9-4, 3-1) can grab the conference's regular-season crown and ensure that the loss to Pride wasn't their last appearance at Johnny Unitas Stadium in Towson.
Towson can also capture the No. 1 seed and homefield advantage if Fairfield (8-5, 3-1) loses to Hofstra (5-8, 2-2) on Friday night.
But coach Shawn Nadelen acknowledged that it will be interesting to see how the team reacts to its worst loss since an 8-1 rout against Penn State on April 12, 2014 – which was also the last time the offense had been so unproductive.
"I'm more concerned with how we respond and how we take this loss and kind of use it on a positive note," he said. "It's critical in a few different ways, but I'm excited and hopeful that we'll move forward from here."
Perhaps the most encouraging sign is that this year's squad has not lost two games in a row. After a 15-11 setback to No. 17 Loyola Maryland on Feb. 18, Towson won two straight and repeated that feat after an 8-7 triple overtime loss at No. 19 Navy on March 3. And since a 7-6 loss to No. 11 Ohio State on March 17, the Tigers had won four consecutive games.
Senior defenseman JoJo Ostrander is hoping that history will re-emerge again.
"Usually after a loss, we always respond pretty well," he said. "We just know this was a bad loss on us. Hopefully in practice on Monday, we just respond better. I think we're going to respond well."
Circling back to "Three Things to Watch" …
1) Shooting accuracy. Towson has not been a terribly efficient offense this season, but the unit's shooting percentage of 24.8 percent (which ranked 56th out of 69 Division I teams) could be overlooked because the team was winning. On Saturday, however, the Tigers shot a paltry 6.9 percent, managing to put just two goals past the Pride goalie duo of freshman Jack Concannon (zero goals allowed and two saves in 16 minutes, 43 seconds of play) and senior Chris Selva (two goals allowed, 12 saves in 43:17). Nadelen said the shooters rarely made Selva work for his stops.
"We didn't shoot the ball in great spots," Nadelen said. "I thought a lot of our shots were within his body frame or easy for him to get his stick on. We didn't really challenge him to move his stick. He was able to soak some things up that way. We definitely didn't have a spark offensively, which was apparent."
2) Faceoffs. Appearing fully recovered from an injury that forced him out of the third quarter of an 8-7 win at Fairfield on April 11, Towson sophomore Alec Burckley was credited with 7-of-12 faceoff wins and two ground balls. Burckley (50.5 percent on 93-of-184) and his wings of junior long-stick midfielder Pat Conroy and sophomore short-stick defensive midfielder Tyler Young (Arundel) outdueled a Hofstra unit headed by sophomore Kris Clarke, who had entered the game ranked ninth in the nation at faceoff percentage (63.0 percent on 162-of-257) and 14th in ground balls per game (6.3). Clarke finished 6-of-14 with a game-high four ground balls, but Nadelen said the Tigers failed to capitalize on the faceoff unit's success.
"You want to maximize your possessions, and we didn't do that," he said. "They did a good job of kind of making it a one-and-done scenario for us with saves and getting the ball up and out and making us play a lot of defense and wearing us down and slowing the game down that way. Alec responded well from being injured and getting back out there and giving us what we had hoped from him. Obviously, we want to take advantage of that."
3) Discipline. The Pride converted 1-of-2 extra-man opportunities and has now enjoyed 64 man-up chances, which ranked second only to Manhattan's 66 in that department. But they didn't really need extra-man chances as they were able to break down Towson's defense with dodges on the wings that left teammates open on doorstep and curls from behind the net. Junior attackman Sam Llinares, who led all scorers with four goals, said the offense was not intimidated about the challenge of facing a Tigers defense that had entered the contest ranked third in the country in fewest goals per game at 6.9.
"We always have confidence when we play," he said. "We just did a better job of grinding out possessions. [Junior midfielder] Brian von Bargen had two assists on just dodge after dodge, and we just stayed with it. We fed off of Chris and the defense's energy."