No. 15 Ohio State's 7-6 win against No. 18 Towson on Tuesday night at Johnny Unitas Stadium in Towson had a Baltimore tinge to it.
Junior attackman Carter Brown, a Calvert Hall graduate, led all scorers with five points on four goals and one assist. Freshman attackman Colin Chell, a Boys' Latin graduate, added a goal.
Defensively, starting junior defenseman Robby Haus, a Gilman graduate, caused one turnover and collected one ground ball. Freshman long-stick midfielder Brendan Barger, a Gilman graduate, had three ground balls and one caused turnover. And junior short-stick defensive midfielder Kacy Kapinos, a Loyola Blakefield graduate, picked up one ground ball.
Brown said the large group of Baltimore-area players who dot the roster was one of the reasons why he chose the Buckeyes (7-2).
"We have some Baltimore guys that I've been friends with for a long time," he said. "We're all really good friends, and it's cool to come back and win on a field that I played in high school."
Nick Myers, who has coached Ohio State for the past seven years, credited his relationships with Baltimore-area high school coaches for the pipeline here.
"Certainly, some of the best lacrosse in the country is played here in Baltimore, and we'd be fools not to come in here and try to find the very best young men," Myers said. "The thing we've really tried to focus on is the right people, too. We had two captains last year from Baltimore [goalkeeper Greg Dutton and defenseman Joe Meurer]. If you look at the guys on our team, these are guys that really fit the mold of Buckeye lacrosse and have really helped be a strong foundation of who we are in a number of ways."
Circling back to "Three Things to Watch" …
1) Defense vs. defense. In a battle between top-five units, both defenses lived up to their billing. The Buckeyes, who entered the game with the No. 5 defense in Division I at (allowing 7.4 goals per game), shut out Towson for the final 27 minutes, 54 seconds. Redshirt sophomore goalie Tom turned aside 11 shots, including four in the fourth quarter. The Tigers, who ranked fourth at 7.3 goals allowed per game, surrendered just seven, and redshirt junior goalkeeper Tyler White made a game-high 12 saves. But White said the defense bent in the second half.
"I think we kind of just gave them some unfortunate goals, some uneven match-up stuff," he said. "Sliding when we didn't have to or not sliding when we had to. It's just very frustrating."
2) Man-up vs. man-down. Towson did not help itself in the scoring department, whiffing on two extra-man opportunities in the fourth quarter. The first situation was snuffed out by an overthrown skip pass by junior attackman Spencer Parks (St. Paul's), and the second chance ended with only one shot that went wide right. Ohio State's top-ranked man-down defense still has not given up a goal in 10 short-handed situations, but sophomore attackman Joe Seider (Hereford) said the Buckeyes didn't do anything special.
"It's nothing we haven't seen at all," said Seider, who scored all three of his goals in the first half. "We got some shots off, but their goalie made some good saves. We didn't find the right spots at times. But it wasn't something we hadn't seen before."
3) Christoper May vs. Alec Burckley. Burckley, a sophomore, battled May, the Buckeyes' fifth-year senior, to a 5-5 draw in the first half. But in the second half, May won 5 of 6 faceoffs, and his prowess helped Ohio State gain the advantage in time of possession. Tigers coach Shawn Nadelen said Burckley, who finished 6-for-15, battled well in the first half before fading.
"I thought Alec did a decent job for the most part in the first half, being able to get it to a 50-50 opportunity," Nadelen said. "I thought our guys were more dialed in than we were against Hobart and made some possessions go our way. Their guy's really good. When we're not able to get the ball into our offensive end after stops or when they're winning faceoffs, it makes for a really long day."