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ALFRED, N.Y. -- Visiting Nazareth rallied Wednesday from a five-goal deficit early in the third quarter to defeat previously unbeaten Alfred in an Empire 8 men's lacrosse game at Merrill Field, 13-9.

The Golden Flyers outscored Alfred 11-3 in the second half to improve their overall record to 5-2 and their E8 mark to 1-0. The upstart Saxons lost for the first time this season and are now 7-1 overall, 0-1 in conference play.

Trailing 8-3 with less than nine minutes left in the third quarter, Nazareth rattled off 10 straight goals before the Saxons finally scored with 4:32 left. In a tale of two halves, Nazareth outshot Alfred 22-14 in the second half and had 23 ground balls to Alfred's 11. Nazareth also won 10 of 16 face-offs in the final two periods.

After Alfred long-stick Jake Spadoni scored an unassisted goal with 9:10 left in the third to give the Saxons an 8-3 lead, Nazareth scored the last five goals of the third quarter to tie the score at 8-8.

First Nate DeLone scored off an assist from #C.J. Estes#, then Scott Castle, Trevar Haefele and Kyle McLean each scored unassisted. Then just 15 seconds after McLean's goal, Nazareth long-stick Tucker Sampson scooped up a loose ball and ran the length of the field to score his first career goal to tie the score for the first time since it was 0-0.

Nazareth continued to excel in the fourth quarter by scoring five more goals against the shell-shocked Saxons. Castle and DeLone each scored twice and McLean added his second goal of the game just 15 seconds after DeLone's third goal of the game.

The Saxons were thinking upset early on in building first-half leads of 4-0 and 6-2. Six different players scored for the Saxons in the first half. With Alfred up 4-0, Nazareth got second-quarter goals from Collin Clark (his first of his career) and Estes to move within 4-2. Alfred, though, scored twice in the final 1:30 of the half to regain its four-goal lead.

Castle had an assist in addition to his three goals. Estes had two assists and Joe Jacobs-Ferderbar had one goal and one assist. Freshman Mark Pinski picked up his first career point -- an assist.

Nazareth used two goalies. Junior Grant Williams and sophomore Tim Doyle ech had two saves.

Nazareth resumes its Empire 8 Conference schedule Saturday at home against Elmira at 1 p.m.