OWINGS MILLS, Md.—The 17th ranked Denison men's lacrosse team appears to be hitting their stride.

After falling in their season opener, the Big Red has rattled off five-straight wins against some worthy competition.  Today's victory was a 17-6 win over Nazareth at the Mustang Classic hosted by Stevenson University.

Denison senior Liam Rooney came one point shy of tying the program record for points in a game.  He racked up five goals and six assists on only six shot attempts.  Six of his points came in the first half where he had a hand in the majority of Denison's nine goals over the first 30 minutes.  In the second half, DU outscored the Golden Flyers 8-2 to put the game away.

In addition to Rooney's big day on offense, Will Donohue added four goals and one assist.  On his second goal, Rooney led a pass toward the cage. Donahue couldn't quite make a clean catch, but he was able to use the head of his stick to punch the ball into the goal for one of the more creative finishes you will see this season.

Sophomore attackman Spencer Butler notched a hat trick (3 goals, 2 assists) and Owen Armstrong scored a pair of goals.  Brooks Davy, Wills Hutras and Alex Paulus rounded out the scoring.

Rooney's six assists moved him over the 100 career assist milestone for his career.  He currently has 102 assists in 54 games, moving him into sixth place all-time at DU.

The Denison defense also continued to excel as Richie Bartozzi and Teddy Sawyer combined for eight caused turnovers.  Bartozzi paced DU with five CT's to go along with two ground balls. Henry DeCamp was 5-of-13 facing off.  He finished with three ground balls.  Stephen Paras had five saves while playing 55 minutes in the cage.  Nazareth's Alex Winkler had 10 saves in 50 minutes of action.

The Big Red outshot Nazareth 49-23 and won the ground ball battle, 31-21.  The Golden Flyers committed 19 turnovers and 13 were caused by DU.  There were seven EMO's in the game and Denison was 2-for-4 when playing man-up.  Nazareth finished 1-for-3 in their limited extra-man opportunities.

Denison improves to 5-1 and will enter North Coast Athletic Conference play on Saturday, March 25 when they travel to Greencastle, Indiana to take on DePauw University.