The rain poured down at James M. Shuart Stadium on Wednesday night but was not enough to stop Hofstra from defeating fourth-seeded University of Delaware 8-6 in the semi-finals of the Colonial Athletic Association tournament.
With the win, Hofstra (11-4, 4-1 CAA) will advance to the CAA Championship game on Saturday here in Hempstead while Delaware (7-9, 1-4 CAA) saw its CAA goals go down the drain.
“Obviously thrilled to get a CAA playoff win at home,” Head Coach Seth Tierney said. “Anytime that happens there’s good things that are going on. To have 22 [John Reicherter] back was huge for us.”
Hofstra goals were scored by Sam Llinares (2 G), Ryan Rielly (2 G), Mike Malave (1 G), Drew Coholan (1 G), Lance Yapor (1 G) and John Reicherter (1 G).
The Pride scored twice in the first quarter but made for a tough first half as Delaware went into the break leading 4-2. Starting out with the first quarter, Hofstra and Delaware exchanged goals to knot the score 2-2 at the end of the first 15 minutes. Delaware goalie Conor Peaks stopped five of Hofstra’s shots during that time period.
In the second quarter, Delaware took its first lead with Dan Keane’s second goal of the game assisted by Beau Jones at 5:05. With less than 40 seconds to go in the half, junior Brian Kormandy gave the Blue Hens the extra edge off of a Steve DeLargy pass to send Hofstra into the locker room frustrated trailing 4-2.
“The first half was rough,” Coach Tierney said. “It wasn’t for a lack of trying, but a lack of executing and it just took a little time in the third quarter. We couldn’t get out of the locker room fast enough and we just had to crack their zone… and then we were able to take care of business.”
Part of that frustration was the amount of effort the Pride put in but not seeing as a result on paper.
“The halftime stats are the most meaningless pieces of paper there is because I start to feel like, why aren’t we winning?” Coach Tierney said. “I think we lost one faceoff, we were up in ground balls, we had a perfect clear on the ball, we were 5-5 they had two turnovers.”
Coming out of the break, Rielly scored his second of the game, a career-high two goals, on a breakaway just 16 seconds into the quarter.
“The second one was weird,” Rielly said. “I thought there was a penalty or something and no one picked me up… I’ve never been that close to the goal before.”
Delaware junior Jeff Heath scored at the 2:33 mark to keep the Blue Hens lead at two but Reicherter, after being out with an injury and missing the last nine games, answered right back for Hofstra 0:13 later to cut the deficit to one. For Reicherter, this game did not only trigger emotions for him being back, but for his teammates as well.
“A lot of the guys on this team, this was our first playoff game,” Reicherter said. “Early on we just kind of needed to get settled in, we were really emotional and I think we had a big third quarter coming out of half-time and we just settled down.”
Reicherter’s goal was the spark that triggered the flame the rain could not put out for Hofstra as they went on a four-goal run in the third. Llinares tied it up 5-5 and Coholan took the lead on an assist from Hendrickson and gave the Pride lead for good at 5:36 and eventually ending the third quarter with a 7-5 lead.
Both teams went on to score in the fourth but even as the pressure was on in the final few minutes, Delaware was unable to successfully finish any chances as the Pride saw its CAA goals continue with the 8-6 win.
Hofstra outshot Delaware 27-15 and picked up 40 ground balls to Delaware’s 28. Nine of those ground balls were picked up by freshman FOGO Kris Clarke at the ‘X.’ Clarke won 14-of-18 faceoffs on the night.
“He lost four faceoffs and two he lost to himself through violations,” coach Tierney said. “So he literally lost two faceoffs clean today. That’s a pretty good day at the office for a guy who was playing in high school a couple of months ago.”
Despite the loss, Delaware’s Conor Peaks had 10 saves for the Fightin’ Blue Hens while Hofstra goalie Chris Selva struggled in the first half but managed to fight the weather and make make three saves for the Pride.
Next up, Hofstra will advance to the championship finals and will face the winner of Drexel versus Towson on Saturday. The Pride has two CAA Championship titles, one in 2006 under former head coach John Danowski, and the most recent in 2008 under the direction of current head coach Tierney. The only year the Pride won the tournament as the first seed was in 2006 and was the second seed in the 2008 victory.
