Tigers

In eight games this season, Towson has started junior Thomas DeNapoli and sophomore Cory Dobyns on attack. The third attackman spot has been more of a revolving door. Five players have started as the third attackman. Sophomore Justin Mabus has made the most starts (three), and senior Matt Hughes, junior Paul Danko Jr., and freshman Brian Bolewicki have each had a turn. Junior Devin Grimaldi was the latest candidate to get a shot at playing with DeNapoli and Dobyns. He finished 0-of-1 from the field, grabbed six ground balls, committed three turnovers and caused one turnover in the Tigers' 12-4 loss to No. 20 Duke on Saturday.

The vibe flowing from the Towson locker room at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis after the Tigers' 8-7 win against Navy wasn't just tinged with relief. There also seemed to be a sense of defiance. That emotion was evident in the postgame comments of a pair of Towson players -- sophomore attackman Cory Dobyns and senior goalkeeper Andrew Wascavage. “I believe we're one of the best teams in this country, and we have some of the best coaches in the country,” said Dobyns, who recorded two goals and one assist in the victory over the Midshipmen.

The Towson men's lacrosse team took just one lead in Tuesday night's game against Navy, and that's all the Tigers would need. Sophomore midfielder Greg Cuccinello's goal with 10:28 remaining in the fourth quarter gave Towson an 8-7 victory over the Midshipmen before an announced 824 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. The Tigers trailed for 38 minutes, 42 seconds - including a 3-0 deficit after the first quarter - but Cuccinello's heroics led them to the program's first win at Navy.

These two sides have split the last six meetings, but Navy won last year's contest, 10-6, at Johnny Unitas Stadium. Towson (2-4) is still smarting from a 10-9 overtime setback to Marist last Friday night in which neither team scored in the fourth quarter and the Tigers failed to score on an extra-man opportunity. Navy (3-3) snapped a three-game losing skid with a 12-11 decision against Lafayette last Saturday. The starting attack of juniors Sam Jones and Tucker Hull and freshman T.J. Hanzsche combined for eight goals and two assists.

Towson's 10-9 overtime setback to Marist on Friday night wasn't just the team's fourth mark in the loss column. It was a missed opportunity. After opening the season with three consecutive losses, the Tigers thought they had turned the corner with back-to-back victories over Mercer and Mount St. Mary's. But the lack of execution against the Red Foxes was puzzling to Towson coach Shawn Nadelen. “It's frustrating because I thought we had executed at a pretty high level against Mount St. Mary's offensively, and I was looking forward to having our guys do the same thing,” he said Monday morning.

It's a Thursday afternoon - five days after the most surprising team in all of Division I men's college basketball completed its season - and these guys aren't obliged to be in an otherwise empty gym, firing jump shots. In fact, no one would blame the starters from this year's Towson basketball team if they wanted to get away from the game for a while. They just finished a remarkable resurrection, from 1-31 laughingstock to 18-13 and tied for second in the Colonial Athletic Association.

When Princeton's 2012 campaign ended with a 6-5 loss to Virginia in the first round of the NCAA tournament, one of the biggest questions looming was how the program would replace goalkeeper Tyler Fiorito, a four-time All American who was the Ivy League Player of the Year. Matt O'Connor has provided the answer. The freshman has surrendered just 15 goals in two starts and made a game-high 10 saves in the No. 14 Tigers' 11-8 upset of No. 5 Johns Hopkins Friday night. O'Connor anchored a defense that limited the Blue Jays to their lowest output of the season.

No. 5 Johns Hopkins had thought that Friday night's contest against No. 14 Princeton would be a good barometer of the team's progress thus far. The result, however, was not what the Blue Jays had been hoping for. The 11-8 setback exposed Johns Hopkins on several fronts. The defense was slow on its slides and had problems with the Tigers' picks, the offense was inaccurate and couldn't take advantage of a retooled defense, and the team was turnover-prone. It all adds up to what should be a good deal of soul-searching among the Blue Jays.

For more than a decade, Towson's last regular-season home game has been a sleepy, sad event. It usually signaled the end of another long, losing season and the end of mostly disappointing college basketball careers for seniors playing their last game. For this year's Tigers, there is no postseason after former players couldn't adhere to the rules governing the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate. But there is plenty of hope for an increasingly bright future. In closing their first winning season in 17 years with a sloppy, but satisfying 67-64 victory over Hofstra on Saturday at Towson Center, the Tigers made history by completing the biggest single-season turnaround in NCAA history.