When the Fairfield men?s soccer team upended host Connecticut Saturday, Towson received what it had hoped for ? a home game in this year?s NCAA Division I tournament.
No. 15 Towson will put a 13-game unbeaten streak on the line today when it hosts the Stags, who won the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship and picked up the program?s first NCAA win.
“It?s another step in what has really been an unbelievable season,” Towson athletic director Mike Hermann said. “For a team to be picked No. 7 in the conference poll, it?s really been amazing.”
The Tigers will host the game at 2 p.m. at Towson Center Field. Towson hasn?t played since Nov. 3, after earning a first-round bye.
The Tigers are led by Colonial Athletic Association coach of the year Frank Olszeski and first-team honorees Sebastian Haensel, Nigel Marples and Pat Healey (Calvert Hall).
The Tigers were honored in a halftime ceremony at the Towson men?sbasketball home-opener Monday night. And Hermann said the campus community has embraced the team.
“I think the response has been very good,” Hermann said. “I?ve enjoyed watching students out watching the team. The attendance has grown as the season has gone on.”
Meanwhile, 40 miles south, the defending national champion Maryland men will be hard at work in a quest to repeat. They host St. John?s tonight at 7 p.m. at Ludwig Field after earning a first-round bye.
The Terps (15-4-1) are 12-1 at home this season and are led by midfielders Maurice Edu and Stephen King. Both are among the 15 semifinalists for the men?s 2006 M.A.C. Hermann Trophy, awarded to the nation?s top player.
Maryland is a top-five seed in the tournament for the fifth straight year, and would host another game should it advance.
St. John?s (14-5-2) beat Monmouth, 1-0, in first-round action Nov. 10 in Queens, N.Y.
DIVISION III
The Johns Hopkins men?s soccer team (18-1-2) is slated to face Western New England (16-5-2) at Williams College Friday in the NCAA Division III tournament round of 16. Hopkins advanced with a 3-1 win over Christopher Newport on Nov. 11.
The Hopkins women were eliminated from postseason play Monday, falling to Virginia Wesleyan, 5-3, in a shootout.
