#16 Florida Southern Takes Down Concordia Irvine, 9-8

LAKELAND, Fla. - In the first meeting between the two programs, the 16^th-ranked Florida Southern College men's lacrosse team took down visiting Concordia University Irvine 9-8 Sunday afternoon. Despite not scoring over the final 17:34 of the contest, the Mocs held off the charging Golden Eagles to secure the first victory of the season.
 
The win moves Florida Southern's record to 1-4 on the year while the Golden Eagles fell to 1-2 overall.
 
The Moccasins saw another strong outing from keeper Michael Simone who made 14 saves in the victory while allowing just eight goals. Defensively, senior Mason McQuiggin led the way with four caused turnovers while freshman Carson Corona chipped in two.
 
In a battle of two face off specialist ranked inside the top-10 nationally in both face off percentage and ground balls per game, junior Jacob Czyz dominated CUI's Cade Poe as he went 8-of-11 (.727) and held Poe to just one ground ball. Poe was averaging .690 heading into the game with 10.0 ground balls per game. He went 3-of-11 (.273) with just one ground ball. Drew Klingman came in for CUI and won 6-of-10 (.600) for the Golden Eagles including 4-of-8 versus Czyz and 2-of-2 versus Luke Henricksen. Overall Czyz finished 12-of-19 (.632) with a team-best six ground balls while adding his third goal of the season.
 
Junior Jack Epley led the offensive effort with two goals and an assist while sophomore Madduz Walton and senior Matt Flammenspeck each added two goals in the victory. Sunday marked the first action of the season for Flammenspeck, a 100-plus goal scorer for the Mocs. Czyz, freshman Brady Colarik and freshman Ian Evans all tallied one goal with Evans scoring the game-winner late in the third quarter. Senior Brydon Robichaud was the only other point scorer as he picked up an assist.
 
CUI was led by Chad McFadden who scored two goals and had two assists while Keegan Charapoom chipped in two goals as well.
 
The Mocs and Golden Eagles traded goals over the opening 15 minutes of action with the Mocs holding the only leads in the period, 2-2. CUI earned its first lead of the contest at 13:01 of the second as Brody Champion gave the Golden Eagles a 3-2 lead. Walton answered for the Mocs less than two minutes later to tie things at 3-3. CUI took its second and final lead of the contest at 9:24 in the second as McFadden scored one of his two goals. Flammenspeck scored his opening goal of the season five minutes later at 4:13 to tie things once again as the score remained 4-4 heading into halftime.
 
The third quarter was all Moccasins as FSC scored five-straight goals to open the second half. Epley got things started just over 1:30 into the second half giving FSC a 5-4 advantage. Four minutes later Walton found the back of the cage to go up 6-4. Colarik scored the first goal of his collegiate career minutes later at 6:40 to push the lead to 7-4. Three minutes later, the Mocs scored back-to-back goals within a minute of each other as Flammenspeck and Evans found the target. Leading 9-4 with just 2:34 left in the third, the Mocs looked to be in control. CUI added a late goal with under a minute to play in the period to enter the fourth down 9-5.
 
The fourth saw the Golden Eagles score back-to-back goals within 1:11 of one another with just 12:20 left in the contest, cutting the deficit to 9-7. The Mocs defense stood firm the rest of the period until with 58 seconds remaining the Golden Eagles tallied the final goal of the contest at 9-8.
 
The Mocs will now hit the road for back-to-back weekends. FSC begins their road swing in North Carolina as FSC visits Belmont Abbey Saturday, March 1 for a 1 p.m. contest.
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