The Mavericks earned a 13-12 win in a double-overtime thriller over the Tigers and senior attackman Carson Schwark scored a game-high seven points.
Schwark scored four goals along with three assists in the contest.
“That’s been Carson’s role this year is to be the senior leader. For some guys, in some years, that means that they must go out and put up a ton of points and the ball lives in their stick. Going back to Steve Brandenburg, the ball was always in his stick, Jack Griffin, the ball was always in Jack’s stick his senior year. We haven’t really asked Carson to be a guy who carries and has the ball all the time. We want Carson to be a facilitator of the offense by contributing from an off-ball role,” Head Coach Vince Smith said.
Redshirt freshmen midfielders Drew Eickelman and Trent Pernell each finished the game with four points and combined for five goals and three assists.
Redshirt freshman defender Jake Eickelman poked the ball free off the opening faceoff in the second overtime period. J. Eickelman picked up the ground ball and passed it to Schwark who made the extra pass to sophomore midfielder Blake Amiatu to win the game 14 seconds into double overtime.
Colorado College (CC) won the opening faceoff on a violation in the first overtime period and put two shots on goal. Redshirt freshman goalie Nolan Hoffman fended off the Tigers attacks to keep his team alive.
Freshman midfielder Sergio Pelayo almost ended the game with 2:09 left in the first overtime period as his shot rung off the post. Pelayo’s shot was the final shot on goal in the overtime period.
“When you are standing around in a circle looking at everyone, you can look at the emotion on a guy’s face, and tell, here’s a guy who is playing the best he can and is dumping it all out there, and you’re the guy looking at him and you start to think, am I really giving my all to this? I think it was really one of those moments when we are down 4-7, guys really looked around the circle and just decided that hey, I’m not doing my best for my teammate, and I’ve got to do that,” Smith said.
Colorado Mesa University (CMU) opened the second half down 4-7. The Mavericks scored three unanswered goals to open the half to tie the game up at 8:31 left in the third quarter.
Dylan Brown quickly answered with a goal of his own to put CC back up by one. Pernell tied the game back up with 3:35 left in the quarter.
The Tigers ended the quarter outscoring the Mavericks two to one to give themselves a 10-9 lead.
CMU scored two unanswered goals to open the fourth quarter to take an 11-10 lead with 8:27 left in the quarter. Brown scored his final goal of the game and tied the game back up two minutes later.
Amiatu scored his first goal of the game to give CMU the lead with 4:21 left in the fourth quarter. Conrad Song sent the game to overtime as he tied the game up at 12 with 3:07 left in regulation.
Hoffman finished the game with 11 saves in 36:14 minutes of play, and CMU finished the game with 16 saves as a team.
The Mavericks had four different players score two points in the game.
Anders Erickson was CC’s leading scorer with two goals and three assists. Erickson has scored 49 points in nine games this season.
“Well our goal was to short stick shut him off, we felt like they are not as talented in other areas of the field. So, we felt like if we could get a short stick and keep Anders from touching the ball as often as he normally would in a normal game. Maybe that would put a little more pressure for some of those other guys to step up,” Smith said.
CMU’s start conference play on Friday, April 2 at 7 p.m. against Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah.
