It was a great
day to be a Panther down in
If you were up
for alumni weekend last week and watched us play against Trinity you wouldn't
have recognized the team that took the field yesterday. There were many
notable performances, I won't mention all of them but will try to give a few
highlights.
It started with
Dave Campbell facing off and starting to look like the player we thought he
could be this year, he's been getting healthier and with that has been able to
come up with a few more 50/50 balls of the draw.
Pete Britt was
exceptional in the cage and probably played his best game of the year, he made
almost all of the saves that he should be making and then stole a few for
us. As always he outletted the ball well and
got our transition game going.
Our close defense
of James Guay, John Bambrick,
Glenn Bickley, and Chris Mejia all played
well and played their most physical game of the year. Sophomore
Charlie Schopp has emerged as a big time player at
long stick midfield. He's been putting the ball on the ground
consistently the past few games and has done an excellent job on ball, he will
get some serious consideration for most improved player this year.
The short stick
defensive midfield group of Frank Granara, Matt
Virtue and Alex Giammarco all ran the field well and
have established themselves as playmakers in the middle of the field. If
there is a defining group of players who exhibit the kind of lacrosse we want
to play as a team it would be these guys.
Offensively we
were able to generate some excellent looks against Wesleyan's zone but also
capitalized on our transition opportunities which took some pressure off of our
offensive unit. Jim Cabrera finished the day with 3 goals and earned the
game ball, it's nice to see him get going offensively. If his shot starts
falling, we will be a different team come May.
We've changed
some things up with our attack unit and have started Matt Ferrer
for the past two games. Matt is more of a crease guy than some of our
other attackmen and has given us a boost on
offense. He scored two big goals for us yesterday but had an even bigger
impact on the game with how he fought for ground balls and got us the ball back
on 3 or 4 occasions.
Finally, Pete
Smith showed yesterday that he's one of the best attackmen
in the NESCAC. He finished the day with 3 assists and if we had just
canned a few more layups he could have had a couple more. The
highlight of the day for him was when we called timeout with 9 seconds left in
the first half. We had put in a play the day before to get a quick shot
off against the zone with the main look being to Mike Stone. As we got
into the play Wesleyan did a nice job of reading what was happening and rotated
over to Mike quickly but in doing so left Chris Teves
open on the door step where Pete found him for a goal with 3 seconds remaining
in the half. The impressive part of the read by Pete was that it
happened so quickly and that Chris was the 3rd option on the play.
Time
to get ready for Tufts who will be coming to town next Saturday for a game that
should decide who will be the #1 seed in the NESCAC playoffs and host the
championship weekend.
Tufts has been playing very well of late and we'll
have our hands full for sure, can't wait!
Thanks for all of
your continued support!
Yeah blue,
Dave