A victory looked extremely improbable for the Tigers after they fell six goals behind No. 20 Hofstra (4-5, 1-2 Colonial Athletic Association) in the fourth quarter of Saturday night’s contest.  However, Towson reminded the Pride that lacrosse is a game of runs and reeled off six unanswered goals in the final 11 minutes of regulation to tie the game with two seconds left and force overtime. After a scoreless first overtime, freshman midfielder Justin Mabus scored with 38 seconds left in the second overtime to give the Tigers (6-3, 2-0 CAA) the 10-9 win in Hempstead, N.Y.

The Tigers have won four straight games and are now 3-2 on the road this season. They are now in first place in the CAA standings.

“In big games, big players step up in big situations, and that’s what happened,” senior co-captain Carl Iacona, who grew up 15 minutes outside of Hempstead, said. “We were just sticking to the game plan. The first half, our team had probably the worst half I’ve ever played in or ever been a part of. We started getting the ball through X and getting the ball to the backside, and when we started doing that, we started hitting the back of the net.”

The DeNapoli cousins appeared all over the scorecard. Towson’s Thomas DeNapoli registered three goals and added three assists and notched the game-tying goal with two seconds left. Hofstra’s Mike DeNapoli scored three first-half goals and played a large part in the Pride’s ability to dominate the Tigers throughout the first three periods.

Offense was kept in check in the first half. The Pride went into halftime with a 4-2 lead and a 20-7 shot advantage. Through the first 18 minutes of the second half, the Pride outscored the Tigers 5-1 to take a 9-3 lead with 12:04 left in the game.

The Tigers then scored three goals in a three-minute span to cut the Pride lead to three with 8:28 left. The score remained 9-6 until there was 2:58 left in the game and senior attack Sean Maguire found the net for his only tally of the contest. Fifty-five seconds later, senior attack Matt Lamon scored his third goal of the contest, an unassisted marker to cut the Hofstra lead to just one goal.

After the Tigers gained possession and called a timeout with 44 seconds left to play, DeNapoli completed the comeback with his 12th goal of the season with two ticks remaining.

For the second straight game, junior goalkeeper Andrew Wascavage played the whole duration of the game. He made 10 saves.