The Panthers improved to 6-0 on Saturday after the home opener against a much improved Colby squad.  We were treated to some arctic temperatures for the game with a brisk wind blowing from the North.  This game was a tale of two halves. Colby dictated tempo and out hustled us in the 1st half, while in the 2nd we were able to get out and run a bit and started getting the ball off the ground.

Colby has two excellent attackmen both hailing from Darien, CT in Caddy Brooks and Whit McCarthy who make them a formidable offensive unit.  They gave James Guay and John Bambrick all they could handle and finished (3,3) combined but we were able to hold the rest of their team to 4 goals with only 2 of them coming in the 2nd half.  

Colby had the ball for much of the 1st half as we had a hard time clearing the ball initially and weren't coming up with many ground balls.  They were patient and were able to execute their offense better than we were able to execute what we want to do defensively.   We gave up two strong handed sweeps to their midfielders for goals and two feeds inside which was one of the things we wanted to take away against the mules.   Their 5th goal of the 1st half was a garbage goal after we had stripped the ball and didn't take bodies on the crease.  In the 2nd half we were able to get some stops and more importantly we didn't give them any second chances as we came up with most of the ground balls and turned those into transition opportunities for our offense.   Chris Mejia had his best game of the season at close defense by creating a few turnovers and by getting the ball up quickly to our defensive middies. We ended up getting goals out of Frank Granara, Jeff Begin and Matt Virtue who all run the field extremely well and played some great on ball defense.

On offense we continue to be a balanced scoring team with 9 different goal scorers and 5 different players with assists.  Skyler Hopkins had his best game of the year with a few nice feeds and two big goals.  Tom Petty, Mike Stone, and Jim Cabrera also added two goals apiece.  Once again it's great to see Mike Stone be able to get some good looks even when the other team is shutting him off for the entire game. 

Next up is a Williams squad that has suffered some tough losses so far this year but have the talent to be one of the top teams in our league.  We're looking forward to having a few guys back this week for the game and have our eyes on the Thomsen Trophy!