Site: College Park, MD. (Capital One Field at Maryland Stadium)
Score: Maryland 23, High Point 12
Records: No. 4 Maryland (1-0, 0-0 Big Ten), No. 20 High Point (0-1, 0-0 SOCON)
Next HPU Event: Saturday, Feb. 8 -- vs Duke (High Point, N.C.), Noon
COLLEGE PARK, MD-- The High Point Men's Lacrosse team opened up its season against #4 Maryland. The Terrapins were victorious over the Panthers 23-12. Freshman goalie Parker Green tied the program record for saves in a single game with 20. Freshman Tyler Hendrycks also made a large impact in his debut scoring a team-leading three goals.
"Tough loss, you never want to be on the end of one of those, head coach Jon Torpey said. "I thought we played a good first half. In the second half, we got snake bit and we did not have the ball. We struggled at the faceoff x, we struggled on first chance opportunities to clear the ball. We had a couple of chances to maybe get it back, we went hard and aggressive and that ended up biting us a little bit. I love our group I think we will be back and we will be fine. This will be an opportunity for us to grow, figure things out and move forward to next week when we will be playing an incredibly talented duke team."
Maryland jumped out to a three-goal lead to start the game. Sophomore Hunter Vine answered the run with a goal with three minutes and seven seconds left to play in the first quarter. 35 seconds later Hendrycks scored off of a feed from Asher Nolting. With the assist, Nolting extends his point streak to 31 games. Nolting would finish with four points.
The second quarter was back and forth from the start, Hendrycks scored 59 seconds into the third quarter to tie the game at three. Ben Baker assisted Hendrycks, Maryland quickly scored to go back up one. Baker scored his first goal of the year to tie it at four. Hunter Vines scored with 10:39 left in the second quarter to put High Point up 5-4. It was High Point's first lead of the day. Vines ended the day with two goals.
The Panthers answered Maryland's 3-0 run to start the game with a 5-1 run of their own to take the lead. After two goals from the Terrapins to go up one, Jake Schleppy scored a highlight-reel worthy one-handed goal to tie it at six. Maryland would answer and score a seventh goal to go up one. Baker scored his second goal of the day to tie the game once again. The Terrapins picked up two more goals before halftime and took a nine to seven lead into the break.
Maryland came out of halftime hot, scoring three goals to start the third quarter. Asher Nolting scored his first goal of his junior season to bring an end to the Terrapin run. Hendrycks assisted Nolting then scored his third goal of the contest to bring the Panthers within three. The Terrapins scored three goals to end the third quarter.
"Tyler is going to be special, he is a big lefty target, the way Asher plays that position is important for us it always has been. If you look at the guys who have come out of our program our lefty attackman, Connor Robinson, Dan Lomas, Chris Young they always benefited from playing with a great x attackman. I think Tyler's game continues to grow. There are some other freshman guys who are going to add a lot of depth to that group as well. Tyler got the start today and took advantage of the opportunities he had today so I was proud of him as well." Coach Torpey said.
Maryland went on to score eight goals in the fourth quarter. Three Panthers got on the board in the fourth quarter, with Davis Sampere, Koby Russell, and Sean Coughlin all scoring to give High Point 12 goals in the game.
Freshman Parker Green tied the program record for saves in a single game with 20. Austin Geisler set the record in 2014 against Drexel as he made 20 saves against the Dragons.
"I was really proud of Parker, I think if you look at the game and look at the scoreboard you might say wow they really struggled in the cage. But a freshman from Memphis, Tennessee made huge big saves for us, I don't think we gave him the support he needed. 20 saves is incredible in your first-ever college game we told him, if we can keep the game even, we can keep the possessions even we always ask when we play a team like this that's going to generate a lot of shots you have to be in that 18-20 save range. I definitely think he did his job." Coach Torpey said about the debut performance of Green.
Up Next: The Panthers return to High Point for their home opener as they host #7 Duke at Vert Stadium for the second time in program history.
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