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CLINTON, N.Y. -- Visiting Nazareth overcame an early deficit to rally past Hamilton for a 15-5 men's lacrosse victory over the Continentals Tuesday in a non-conference game.

The Golden Flyers, reeling a bit after tough weekend losses to nationally ranked York and Denison respectively, bounced back strong Tuesday to improve to 3-4 overall, while Hamilton dropped to 2-4. The Golden Flyers open Empire 8 Conference play Saturday with their first home game of the season against Elmira at 1 p.m.

Junior attackman Paul Walter scored a career-best five goals and freshman goalie Alex Winkler stopped a career-best 16 shots to fuel the Golden Flyers, who started slowly by falling behind 3-0 in the first 10 minutes. Nazareth rallied, however, to score six straight goals, including three in the final minute of the first quarter, to take the lead for good.

Nazareth scored seven times all told in the second quarter to go up 10-4 at the break. Nazareth then yielded just one goal in the second half as Winkler made 11 saves, including nine in the fourth quarter.

Nazareth was held scoreless for the first 14-plus minutes before finally breaking through with :41 left in the quarter as senior Joe Eiskant scored an extra-man goal off an assist from junior Nick Rodin. Thirty seconds later, sophomore Jack Crowley scored off a pass from junior Jacob Gray to trim Hamilton's lead to 3-2. On the ensuing faceoff, senior Luke Longo picked up the ball after a violation and surged to the goal to score unassisted with just :06 left in the quarter to tie the score at 3-3.

It was all Nazareth in the second quarter as the Golden Flyers scored on seven of their 12 shots, including another goal by Longo in the opening minute off an assist from senior long-stick Andre Bond that broke the tie. Walter delivered three of his goals in the quarter, while Gray, Rodin and Ben Bickford added tallies to give Nazareth a decisive lead.

Walter and senior Hunter Burdick added two goals each in the second half with Burdick breaking the ice in the third quarter with just 2:25 left. Walter scored with just :04 left in the quarter with an assist from Bickford. Nazareth added fourth-quarter goals from Burdick, Walter and Crowley, who now has a team-best 14 for the season. Gray had his second assist of the game and Jason Partridge and Parker Lawrence also had assists.

Nazareth played well defensively with Partridge scooping up five ground balls and causing five turnovers. Longo added seven ground balls in addition to his two goals and Lawrence, a freshman long-stick, had four ground balls. Junior Seth DeLisle continued to control the face-off area by winning 17 of 21 draws and gathering in nine ground balls. He now has 120 face-off wins in 163 attempts (73.6 percent) and has a team-high 69 ground balls.