TAMPA, Fla. (Men's Lacrosse) - After a strong start to Sunday's Sunshine State Conference Championship Game, Florida Tech's momentum came to a halt against No. 1 seed Tampa as the Panthers fell to the Spartans 12-8 in their second ever appearance in the conference final.
Austen Zugelter led the Panthers with three goals and
Carson Clough recorded two goals and an assist.
Logan Sweeney added a goal and an assist in the contest.
Clough and
Jake Pierson collected three ground balls.
Addison Abramson,
Nate Menninger and
Lance Pavlina finished with two caused turnovers. Pavlina also won 11-of-24 at the faceoff dot.
Daniel Flock made seven saves in goal for the Panthers.
Florida Tech ended with more shots, 49-26, and Tampa corralled more ground balls, 30-22. The Panthers went 14-of-18 on their clear attempts, while the Spartans were just a little better at 16-of-18.
After giving up the first two goals of the game to the Spartans, FIT evened the score at 2-2 on goals by Clough and
Tyler Covey. Sean Herdman put UT ahead 3-2 with 5:07 remaining in the first quarter. Zugelter's unassisted goal tied it up again just before the end of the period, but a score by Bryan Wright with two second left on the clock gave the Spartans a 4-3 lead heading into the second quarter.
Goals by Zugelter and
Matt Weinstein handed the Panthers a 6-4 advantage with 12:57 left in the half. However, the Spartans scored four of the next five goals to regain the lead and take an 8-6 edge into halftime.
UT tallied the only goal of the third quarter to push the margin to three, 9-6.
Tampa increased its lead to 10-6 on a goal by Andrew Kew just 50 seconds into the fourth quarter. Unassisted goals by Zugelter and Sweeney cut FIT's deficit to two with 12 minutes remaining. However, the Spartans shut down the Panthers the rest of the way, adding two more goals to their total, to run away with their fourth straight conference championship.
Following the conclusion of the game, four Panthers, Clough, Menninger, Sweeney and Zugelter, were named to the SSC All-Tournament Team.
Make sure you stay up to date with the Florida Tech men's lacrosse team at FloridaTechSports.com.
