'It Means the World' as Towson Wins CAA Title

TOWSON, Md. — Not too long ago, Towson was an NCAA tournament regular and a conference tournament champion more often than not.

The Tigers’ 15-6 pummeling of Delaware in the Coastal Athletic Association final suggests those days might be back.

Nick DeMaio had six assists, Bode Maurer scored four goals and tacked on an assist and Chop Gallagher had three goals and two assists for top-seeded Towson (13-3), which has won nine in a row and earned its first NCAA tournament berth since 2019.

“It means the world,” said defenseman Colby Barsz, who joined DeMaio, Maurer and goalie Luke Downs on the all-tournament team. “I was recruited here, and they were the No. 1 team in the country and kind of hit a rough patch. But we found a way to turn it around and the senior class this year played a huge part in that. It’s just an unbelievable feeling.”

DeMaio, the event’s most outstanding player, set a tournament record with 11 assists over two games, while Maurer’s total of 11 goals (including seven in a semifinal rout of Drexel on Thursday) were the most since the event was established in 2001.

Tyler Owings scored twice for the Blue Hens (9-5), who were denied their third consecutive CAA title.

Delaware declined to make coach Ben DeLuca available to the media after the game.

The sheer volume of unflattering numbers said plenty. The Blue Hens committed a season-high 24 turnovers. They managed just 12 shots on goal. They completed just 15 of 25 clears, including a ghastly 8-for-17 showing in the first half. They suffered their most lopsided loss to Towson since 2002.

It was also the biggest blowout in CAA title game history, surpassing Loyola’s 17-10 defeat of Villanova in 2001.

And unlike the teams’ taut regular-season meeting eight days earlier — an 11-10 Tiger triumph — Towson simply overwhelmed Delaware with both slick offense and physicality in the midfield.

The Blue Hens struggled to even get their offense on the field early, bungling six clears in the first quarter and applying minimal pressure to a Towson defense.

“Something I asked of them coming into the start of the game today as we were doing our final prep was to own the middle of the field,” said coach Shawn Nadelen, who took Towson to five NCAA tournaments from 2013-19. “I felt like that’s something that’s been really useful for us this year and helped us be successful, and these guys delivered on that.”

When needed, both Barsz (on JP Ward) and Joe Petro (on Mike Robinson) handled their assignments with aplomb, limiting a pair that was averaging a combined 4.9 goals to 2 of 11 shooting.

Towson built a 3-0 lead with the help of a pair of Maurer goals, but the Blue Hens lingered despite their sloppiness deep into the second quarter. But the Tigers had a critical stretch late in the half, getting a Gallagher goal and Josh Webber’s extra-man score in a span of a minute before Mikey Weisshaar made it 9-3 on a Maurer feed with five seconds left in the half.

“We came into it knowing we had to play free and away and move the ball, and in those situations is when I think I play the best — when the ball is moving fast,” Maurer said. “Nick was finding me when I was open and I think we were forcing it more than we usually do, but I think it worked in our favor a lot of the time.”

There was little to sort out in the second half as Towson pushed its lead out to 10, doing as it pleased as it neared a postseason return it has waited for since bowing out at home to Maryland in the first round of the 2019 tournament.

The Tigers were winless in the abbreviated pandemic season, then finished below .500 the last three seasons. But Nadelen was optimistic this could be a team that re-emerged as a tournament contender in the preseason.

He was correct. Towson’s showing Saturday was right around its season scoring average of 14.5 goals, and Maurer joined DeMaio, Weisshaar and Joaquin Villagomez as 30-goal scorers on the year. DeMaio has 48 assists, the fourth-best single-season total in school history. Towson has allowed more than 11 goals more than twice, and just 28 over the last five games.

It’s proven a winning formula for these Tigers, who firmly took their place among Nadelen’s best teams — an NCAA quarterfinalist in 2016, the school’s third NCAA semifinalist the following year — while re-establishing Towson as the CAA’s top team.

“This is so special,” Nadelen said. “This is my 20th year at Towson and fortunately have been a part of some pretty fun years and great years, and also some rough ones. For this group, this senior class, from day one in the fall, there was a sense and a tone of a work ethic, of a belief. So for me, I told them I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t the guy that messed it up for them.”