A wild one took place down in Saratoga yesterday afternoon with the Panthers coming out on top 18-15.  In short, the game was back and forth in the first half with it ending up tied at 9 going into the break.  It's hard to imagine giving up nine goals in a half but when you combine some transition opportunities that they cashed in on, 3 man up goals, and a few bread an butter type goals for their top attackman you can get to 9 pretty quickly.  Not that we were giving Pete Britt any help during the first half but he also didn't steal any for us which we always are hoping he's able to do a few times a game.

Offensively we did some good things but didn't capitalize on us holding them to 5 for 12 clearing in the first half and a 13-5 advantage in face offs.  We let them off the hook with some unforced errors when we could have been pulling away.

In the 2nd half we rattled off 7 straight goals to take a 16-9 lead in the 4th quarter.  We tightened things up on defense during this time and had their heads spinning when we were on offense.  During this run Mike Stone scored 3 of his career high 7 goals and Skyler Hopkins scored 2 while assisting on another.   It helped that the officials finally threw a flag against Skidmore in the 3rd quarter, it had been 7 quarters dating back to the 3rd quarter against RPI since we had been man up. We ended up scoring 3 man up goals in the 3rd yesterday.

Another guy who has stepped up his game recently is Tom Petty.  He finished with 3 goals yesterday and has been doing everything we've asked so far this year.  He's splitting time right now with Dave Hild and Jack Masur but is being very productive when he's in the game.

One player to get on the radar is sophomore Andrew Conner.  AC as we all call him spent almost all of last year on the sideline after having surgery on his wrist at the beginning of the season.  When he came back to the team during the playoffs he was so far behind everyone else that it was difficult to see where he'd fit in going forward.  Basically being a freshman all over again this year in terms of experience, he still had a lot to learn in terms of what we are trying to do offensively.  Let's just say that he's figured it out and it doesn't hurt that he's 6-1, 200 and shoots the ball very, very hard.  He probably took 4 or 5 runs for us yesterday with the 2nd midfield line and had a great look to David Hild for a goal and then scored his first career goal on our 18th of the day.  Expect AC to be in the scoring column more often for the rest of the season.

Finally, in case you're wondering how an 18-10 lead with 5 minutes to play turns into an 18-15 game, we just took our foot off the gas a little bit and that's all they needed to climb back in.  We started subbing heavily going into the 18th goal but after we scored that one we had worked in a few new defensemen, 3 new attack......

When they scored their 11th goal with 4:30 to go we still thought we were in good shape and proceeded to get in some more of our back ups as they have worked hard all year and have earned a chance to get out there.  As we're replacing our goalie and another defenseman we end up with too many guys on the field and before we can call timeout they blow the whistle for the face off and award the ball to Skidmore.  They come down and score in 10 seconds.  Still up 18-12, we should be ok.  We figure we'll send Dave Campbell back out to hopefully win the face off and kill some clock but he ends up taking a penalty and they score again within 7 seconds.  Now they're man up, and it's 18-13.  We sub back in all of our starters and then they proceed to score another goal at the 2:30 mark and ten seconds later when they're man up again for yet another unnecessary roughness call against Dave Campbell.  Sometimes Dave just hits kids too hard and the officials think they need to call something. 

All in all, it was a good 3rd quarter and 2/3 of the 4th.  Beyond that we didn't play like a great lacrosse team.   We still have some things to work on but this group hasn't let me down once this year in terms of showing up with a great attitude for practice.

Time to get ready for the Trinity Bantams, winners of the past two regular season match ups against us.  After starting to review some film of them this afternoon, I'll recommend that if any of you are planning to attend the game on Saturday, be sure to bring a cup of coffee or something caffeinated as they've been putting me to sleep when they have the ball on offense.  I also don't think we'll see 33 goals scored this Saturday like we did yesterday but hopefully our offense can keep putting them in the back of the net!