Despite the bitter weather, a crowd of about 1,700 braved the blowing winds at Johnny Unitas Stadium to watch the seventh ranked Hopkins Blue Jays take on the home team, 28th ranked Towson Tigers. After securing a comfortable 12-6 win, Hopkins is off to an undefeated start in the regular season. Sophomore Wells Stanwick notched a career high of four points in the game, with two goals and two assists. Junior Brandon Benn led the team with four goals, marking his sixth career hat trick.
Coming off of a rough loss to High Point, a second year varsity program, Towson had a lot of energy at the beginning of the match. Although this was Hopkins' first game on the road, the Jays' intensity was not lacking either.
“I was really proud our boys matched the level of emotion that Towson brought to the table,” head coach Dave Pietramala said.
To bolster the initial rush of adrenaline, Stanwick put Hopkins on the board within one minute of play off a feed from senior John Ranagan. Stanwicks’ second goal of the evening would come a little less than ten minutes later, this time unassisted, to put the Jays up 2-0 towards the end of the first quarter.
“I think I played pretty well that game,” Stanwick said, on his personal record. “We did a really good job of coming out hard in the beginning.”
Before the end of the first, Benn managed to fire a ball past the Towson goalie from Stanwick's stick, extending the Jays' lead to 3-0. In the fiery opening period, Hopkins managed to scoop up all of the ground balls and outshoot the Tigers, 13-7.
The second quarter saw more even play, as both teams mustered 12 shots each and walked away with three goals apiece at the end. Two minutes in, Towson kicked off the second quarter scoring with a one man advantage goal from sophomore Cory Dobyns. Less than a minute later, Ranagan responded by assisting senior Zach Palmer in his first of two goals for the evening.
Hopkins was not as clean on the ground this round, picking up seven of the 13 loose balls. With more possession opportunities than in the opening quarter, Towson was able to get within range and tally two more goals, making it a one goal game. However, this was the closest the Tigers would get as Stanwick assisted Benn, and junior Rob Guida scored a power play goal to close out the half.
Hopkins enjoyed a fruitful and efficient third quarter, extending their lead to 9-3 by its conclusion. Putting away almost half of their shots, the sharp shooting capabilities of Benn led the Hopkins gold rush.
“We had to make some adjustments at half time,” Pietramala said.
Freshman Ryan Brown got on the board with the man up goal four minutes into the third. The local attacker has not only seen time in both games thus far, but notched a goal in each as well.
“They just gave me the ball and I did what I was supposed to do,” Brown said.
Surviving the onslaught, Towson pieced together three more goals in the final quarter. Benn's last of four goals opened up the final quarter, once more utilizing the man up situation. Tigers sophomore Greg Cuccinello squeezed in his second goal of the game to snap the Hopkins scoring spree. However, the Jays peppered in three more of their own to close out the match 12-6. Palmer evaded the Tigers defense for the unassisted point in the closing seconds of the game.
Hopkins outshot Towson 40-38 in the end, winning 32 ground balls to Towson's 24. Hopkins also won 13 of the 20 face offs, and additionally converted three of their four man up situations.
When asked about the new and unproven program of Hopkins' next opponent, Pietramala said,
“Michigan's number one player is their goalie… We go into every game with a plan A and a plan B in case we need to switch something up.”
The Blue Jays lace up this Saturday to host Michigan at Homewood field at 1:00 p.m.
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