Senior Zach Herreweyers’ final career home game could not have been more satisfyingly bittersweet. In Friday night’s crucial match-up against Army West Point, Herreweyers posted up a season-high five goals, hitting his 100-point career mark and leading the Greyhounds to a 12-6 victory over the Black Knights.

“To do what we did out there was pretty special tonight,” Loyola Coach Charley Toomey said. Not without choking up, Toomey thought this game was his team’s “best effort of the year.”

“We talked an awful lot about our seniors, what they’ve done for this program, and I couldn’t be more proud. We asked our guys to fight for them for 60 minutes,” Toomey said.

Herreweyers’ finesse combined with freshman Pat Spencer’s force has been a strong effort the entire season. Spencer put out two goals and four assists, displaying his own skills with fake flip fed to Herreweyers late in third quarter to award Herreweyers his fifth goal.

“Spencer is as good a freshman as I’ve seen in my 11 years in the league,” Army Coach Joe Alberici said. “He has the ability to get to the goal and finds the open man. Now you put that with Herreweyers, who pretty much catches everything and finishes everything, and it becomes a huge task.”

Herreweyers consecutively scored all three of Loyola’s third quarter goals, each one exercising his diverse range of talent: from a sidearm ground-skirting slingshot to sneaking up on Army goalkeeper AJ Barretto after forcing a turnover off a clear to his classic trick shot with Spencer, he managed to do it all in just a mere 10 minutes.

Army was quick to retaliate against Loyola’s goal effort in the first quarter. 15 seconds after Jay Drapeau scored the Hounds’ first goal, Army’s Dan Grabher got his own off from Max Krieg to tie it early on. Late in the quarter, Spencer helped prop Loyola up to a two-point lead, notching one goal and one assist, fed to Tyler Albrecht at the top.

Loyola is known for its heart-wrenchingly close games, especially with one-goal victories in the team’s last two matches. The Hounds avoided that stress this time, due to their second quarter effort. By halftime, Army dragged behind by four goals.

After Army’s Nate Jones cut it to a one-goal game early in the quarter, Herreweyers responded with a one-timer fed by Spencer from behind the cage. Army retaliated, cutting Loyola’s lead back down with a goal by Connor Cook. Albrecht, Herreweyers, John Duffy, and Brian Sherlock each contributed a goal to the Hounds’ scoring streak.

Less than a minute after Cook’s goal, Romar Dennis fed it to Albrecht, who sniped one from the top. Spencer then notched his third assist of the game, feeding it to fellow freshman John Duffy, followed up exactly one minute later by Herreweyers, who ripped a top-left shot from eight-yards out, assisted by Zach Sirico. Brian Sherlock finished up the first half with a low-left shot, propping Loyola up to a five-point lead before Jimbo Moore finally buried one for Army, finalizing the halftime score at 8-4.

The Hounds’ offensive excellence alone was merely a part of their success Friday night: Their defense, who held Army to just two goals in the second half, shut down Army’s offensive unit completely. In ground balls, Loyola beat the Black Knights (34-25), who in the preseason were ranked No. 3 in the nation for their pickups. The Hounds also had success between the pipes with rookie goalie Jacob Stover.

“We gave [goalie] Jacob Stover a chance to see some 15-yard plus shots,” Toomey said. The freshman goalkeeper saved 12 shots, six of them during the third quarter.

Spencer put the nail in Army’s coffin with 26 seconds left in the fourth, flying past the Army goalkeeper  who was defending him behind the cage, for an unassisted man-down goal on an empty net.

Although leading the entirety of the contest, Loyola proceeded cautiously for unfortunately realistic and historic reasons: Friday night’s game was eerily reminiscent of the 2015 Patriot League Quarterfinal meeting between the two teams, when the Black Knights fought their way back from a 10-5 deficit to beat the Hounds, 12-11.

“The topic came up in the locker room at halftime and it came up again in the fourth quarter,” Toomey said. “You look up and it’s 11-6, and that’s what was going through our mind. You just can’t let up. You know they’re going to keep coming at you.”

Advancing to 7-1 in conference play, Loyola secured a bye to the Patriot League Semifinals and will face Bucknell on Friday, April 29 in Annapolis.