The Pioneers were away for the first time this season playing University of Maryland Baltimore County on Saturday afternoon and Towson on Sunday morning and were defeated by each making their record a losing one. No. 16 Pioneers (1-3) fell to the UMBC Retrievers (1-2) with a score of 6-9 and then lost 9-10 the next day against the No. 20 Towson Tigers (1-1).

In the first quarter of Denver’s game against UMBC, the Pioneers were down 4-0 until the final two minutes of the quarter when sophomore Charley Dickenson fed a pass to junior Brad Richardson to put DU on the scoreboard.

At the start of the second, DU managed to cut the Retrievers’ lead in half when junior midfielder Joe Murray assisted senior attack Jon Paulson for another goal, making the score 4-2. UMBC scored four unanswered goals to take DU down by six going into the fourth quarter. Denver didn’t get a single goal in the entire third quarter but both Murray and junior attack Cliff Smith scored the first two unassisted goals of the game to open the fourth quarter.

Neither team scored again until the last four minutes of the game when UMBC connected with the net to score its final goal. With Pioneers down 9-4 and needing a miracle to win, they could only muster up two more goals, one from freshman Jaime Lincoln and the other from Emerson Eichler.

“UMBC played their best game of the season and their goalie made 20 saves,” said head coach Jaime Munro of why the Pioneers fell to this unranked team. “Statistically we dominated, but couldn’t bury the ball. We hurt ourselves by not taking care of the ball as well as we should have.”

The Pioneers recorded more shots in the game, 39-25 but Denver’s goalie only had eight saves. Denver also won at the face off “x” 13-to-6 and each team had eight penalties, ranging from delay of game, tripping and illegal body check to slashing, pushing and unnecessary roughness penalties for each of the two teams.

The Pioneers started off the game right with a 3-0 lead due to goals by Murray, senior attack Bret Knoll and Smith. However, Towson bounced back with three more unanswered goals to tie the game at 3-3. Lincoln made his first of two goals for the game right before halftime, giving the Pioneers a one point lead heading to the locker rooms.

During the third quarter, Towson made four more unanswered goals until right at the end of the quarter when one Dickenson brother found the other and sophomore John Dickenson scored decreasing the Tigers lead to two. Thanks to Paulson’s back-to-back goals in the fourth quarter and another goal several minutes later DU was only down 9-8 with 4:14 remaining in the game.

Lincoln tied the game at 9-9 when he scored his second goal for DU with 29 seconds remaining. It looked like overtime might be needed, until Towson’s Mitchell Rosensweig scored the game-winning goal with only 18 seconds left in the game.

“We need to instruct our face off wing men to take a more defensive posture,” said Munro of what the team could have done better to win the game against Towson.

The Pioneers will be at home this weekend hosting the Face-off Classic against Brown on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and Penn on Sunday also at 1:30 p.m. Air Force will play the 11 a.m. game on both days.

“We have high expectations,” said Munro of what the team expects in this weekends tournament. “We believe that we can become a great team if we keep working at it. Penn and Brown are just outside of the top 20. It will be great competition for us.”