Senior co-captain Torin Varn scored a career-high three goals while fellow seniors Drew Coholan and Lance Yapor netted two goals and one assist to help Hofstra earn an 11-9 victory over the Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens in game one of the Colonial Athletic Association slate.
The win for the Hofstra Pride (4-2, 1-0 CAA) was their fourth straight and ended Delaware’s season high four-game win streak. The Fightin’ Blue Hens now fall to 0-1 in the colonial.
“I’d like to tell you that one guy did it but this was a group effort,” Head Coach Seth Tierney said about the win. “Anytime you play in the CAA game, it’s a brawl. There’s going to be ice baths for both teams.”
One piece of the puzzle for the pride was freshman Kris Clarke who went 13-22 at the faceoff x against Tyler Barbarich, a junior, who entered today’s game having won 70 percent of his face-off this season. Barbarich was stunned by Hofstra and only capitalized on 10-23.
“He hasn’t been feeling great but he’s worked through some things,” Tierney said. “We were 4-18 face-off a year ago with a senior against Tyler Barbarich. We were 13-23 today with a freshman, that was the difference.”
Hofstra got on the board first with a goal from Coholan. Delaware scored four goals of their own from Jackson Finigan, Jeff Heath, Alex Martinelli and Steve DeLargy to hold the edge over Hofstra 4-2 after a quarter.
DeLargy notched his second of the game to start the second quarter but Hofstra attackman Sam Llinares answered back on a pass from Lance Yapor. Just six seconds later, Delaware faceoff man Tyler Barbarich, won the faceoff and was able to find a clear path to the net for his first goal of the season to give the Blue Hens an early 6-3 lead.
With 11:44 to go in the first half, Hofstra went on a three-goal run starting with Yapor, followed by Varn and then sophomore long-stick midfielder Ryan Rielly who scored the third and final goal to tie it up 6-6 and give the Pride the momentum they needed going into halftime.
With junior John Reicherter sitting on the sidelines for the first CAA game with a lower body injury, Rielly knew he and his teammates were going to have to step it up, and he did just that with his goal.
“We said it all week that we were going to have to play a lot more minutes,” Rielly said. “Whether that be pushing in transition or sitting back playing defense.”
During the first half, Llinares, the team leader in points (23) with 11g, 12a, suffered a lower body injury that kept him from playing the second half. Coach Tierney didn’t have much time to give his team a game plan during the break as to what they would do if Llinares would not return.
“To be honest with you, we didn’t find out that Sam wasn’t going to go until we were walking out,” Tierney said. “So if Sam can’t go, [freshman] Brandyn [O’Connell] goes in. And then we were on defensive possession and I grabbed [assistant] coach [J.P.] Brazel and I said, ‘let’s make sure that we cycle the man up and everything kind of did what it was supposed to do.’”
In the second half, Hofstra got out to another three-goal run against Delaware; Varn notched his third of the game, short stick midfielder Steve Romano scored his first of the season and junior midfielder Mike Malave scored the eventual game winner at 9:58 of the third.
Delaware tacked on two goals late but it was not enough to overcome the deficit.
Hofstra outshot Delaware 36-24 and won the ground ball battle 24-21. Chris Selva had four saves for the Pride while
Conor Peaks made 14 for Delaware.
The Pride will look to increase their win streak to five when they travel to Jamaica, New York to take on the St. John’s Red Storm this Tuesday at 3 pm.
