We came up with another solid NESCAC win yesterday at home against the Mules on an absolutely gorgeous day on Youngman Field.  As I mentioned in my last email, Colby was coming off of an impressive 12-7 win over #5 Endicott and has been playing some great lacrosse so far this year.  They have two attackmen that are as good as anyone we've seen and they play harder as a team than anyone we've faced up until this point.  Throw in a good goalie and a very good face off man and they're capable of beating anyone in the league.

Defensively we had a nice game plan put together which included us making it difficult for their top attackmen to get the ball in their 6v6 offense.  This seemed to take them out of what they wanted to do and forced them to initiate more with their midfield.  Our defensive middies did an excellent job with their on ball defense and executed the fundamentals of our defense very well.  With Jeff Begin and Alex Giammarco both out for a few more games, we've had to move both Brooks Toth and Bart Witmer from their typical offensive roles in the midfield to the defensive end for the time being.  Matt Virtue and Zack Harwood have both settled into their roles as our top two defensive midfielders and have been doing a great job between the restraining lines for us clearing the ball.

We had another balanced scoring effort with 7 different goal scorers in the game.  Leading the way were Skyler Hopkins (4 goals), Mike Stone (3g, 2a), Tom Petty (3 goals), and Pete Smith (1g, 3a).  Our offense very much revolves around our guys sharing the ball and being on the same page in terms of their spacing.  There isn't a whole lot of scripted movement but there is a good deal of reading the defense as well as the other offensive players to make sure we're constantly keeping pressure on the defense.  The nice thing about having such an experienced group is that when someone is out of place or holding onto the ball too long it's pretty apparent and usually it doesn't take the coaches to get on someone about it. 

Another area that we were going to keep a close eye on going into the game was face offs. Their face off man is one of, if not the best guy we've seen and Dave was able to win 50% of the draws and give us enough possessions to put some points up on the board.

Finally, we knew that ground balls were going to play a big role in this game.  Colby is probably the best ground ball team we've faced and this is a part of the game that we take a lot of pride in.  As it turns out, they out groundballed us on the day by a decent amount and it was most noticeable on our defensive end.  Some of our best stops of the day went unnoticed after we would put the ball on the ground and Colby would come back up with it.  This is an area that we can improve on in the coming weeks. 

Overall this is another very solid win over an up and coming team and gets us to 3-1 in the league.  This is going to be a big week for us with road games at Amherst on Wednesday and then at Bowdoin on Saturday.  Both teams won this weekend and as usual we'll be expecting their best shot when we roll into town.