By Andrew Scharff

During a typical game the Hofstra sideline looks like the following. Seth Tierney and the rest of his coaching staff are right on top of the sidelines watching the game and instructing their players who are on the field. While everyone on the bench is about five feet behind them. But Tuesday night the scenery looked a little different.

That’s because Kevin Unterstein was in between the coaching staff and the reserves. But why was he standing their, trying to will his team to important confidence boosting win, instead of on the field where they need him.

Hofstra played the first half without their most important player. Unterstein sprained his ankle in the second half of last Friday’s against Lafayette. Unterstein, plays a defensive short stick middie. He is pivotal in clearing the ball and setting up the Pride offense, also he takes a majority of the face-offs.

Unterstein was cleared to play from the outset by team doctors but Tierney and his staff did not decide to play Unterstein in the first half because they wanted him to be 100% for Drexel on Saturday.

During halftime Tierney and staff decided to play Unterstein. And he responded well. In his first sequence, Unterstein helped clear the ball from Hofstra’s zone like normal, but he also brought a physical presence with him as well as he got tangled with Stony Brook defensive middie Taylor Eason.

“It hurt us. It hurt us in the clearing game. That’s Kevin Unterstein. I am looking at the face-off stats, that’s Kevin Unterstein,” said Tierney. “[I] was very reluctant to put him in but I thought it was going to give our team a boost.”

“He was cleared from the beginning of the game. We chose not to knowing that there was going to be a risk involved. We chose to roll dice. He gave us a boost. He cleared the ball a couple of times, made a couple plays. We need him at full strength for Saturday,” added Tierney. “The guy has a severely twisted ankle and he ran like an animal today. He did what ever he had to do to will this team to win.”

Tierney tapped on junior defenseman Collin Stabler, to attempt to fill the irreplaceable shoes Unterstein. Stabler did earn praise from Tierney for the job he did but Hofstra still lost the game.

“It’s difficult to yell and scream at Collin. He was trying to fill the shoes of a guy that plays like three people in Kevin Unterstein. Collin Stabler gave it his best effort.”

But his best wasn’t good enough.