Towson scored 10 straight goals after Dundalk had cut its lead in half late in the first quarter and rolled to a 13-3 victory for its sixth straight victory Wednesday evening.
Goals by Brennan Harris (game-high three goals) and Brody Donovan gave the Generals a 2-0 lead in the first quarter, before Dundalk’s Marquell Perry scored with a minute left for the Owls (5-3).
After the break, the Generals (6-0) got excellent face-off play from Patrick Murray, dominated time of possession and got a pair of goals and two assists from leading scorer Alex Tyler in the second quarter.
“We just talked real quick, usually our coach had a good way of firing everybody up and everybody usually gets on the same page pretty quick and when we realize we are in some trouble, it’s just a sense of urgency,” said Tyler, in his fourth season on varsity.
The Generals also got two goals from Doug Kadan and one each from Ethan Richards, Max Kosmides, Harris and John Kotula in the second quarter and assists from Donovan and Hudson Arrup as they built a 10-1 lead at halftime.
“Our team has pretty good chemistry,” Tyler said. “I feel like it was kind of slow at the start of the year, but we’ve gotten really close really quick and with us at least, it doesn’t really matter who scored the goal or got the assist, it’s just one point for the good guys.”
Dundalk coach Hassan Davis was happy his experiment with a zone defense worked in the first quarter, but they couldn’t stop the Generals persistent pressure the rest of the way.
“We brought it out into a zone just to kind of switch it up a little bit. We don’t really run zone and it’s the first time we tried it and the guys played really well in it,” Davis said. “As the time whittled down, we started losing our steam and we started losing our momentum and we also started losing our wind.”
Towson coach Phil Rossetti has previously seen slow starts.
“The big thing this year is a couple of our games we have not started fast, so that was an emphasis for us regardless of who our opponent is. Coming out 2-1, a little sluggish, we had to light a fire, make a few adjustments personnel-wise and really kind of hone in on our scoring and running the offense,” Rossetti said. “I thought our guys picked it up there to the point where it was 10-1, so I was proud of the guys how they responded in the second quarter.”
Colin Kosmides, Harris and Andrew Semesky scored Towson’s goals in the second half and Ethan Quick and Daniel Mitchell tallied for Dundalk.
Rossetti thinks his squad may have overlooked a team they defeated 22-1 last season when the Generals went to the state championship game and lost to Severna Park.
“That team is better than they were last year and I think our guys in their mind coming in knew what we did last year,” Rossetti said. “The message to our guys at the half was every game is a big game because as much as we try as coaches to try to motivate them we don’t want them to look past somebody and I think they were thinking about Catonsville.”
The Generals will host rival Catonsville at 5:15 p.m. Friday.
Meanwhile, Dundalk will continue to develop having already played two county powers.
“I looked at the schedule I had. I played Dulaney last week and I played Towson and they are the best teams in Baltimore County,” Davis said. “So like I said, ‘You’ve got to play the best to be the best,’ so sometimes you’ve got to take some L’s.”
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