Middlebury defeated a tough Stevens squad today 13-12 in a
game which at times did not appear to be as close as the score indicates, but
at other times was even closer! We did not enjoy the good fortune of the
beautiful weather we had last week, as today was cold and gray.
We started the game playing unvenly. Pete Mellen was dominating early facing off, our defense and
Alex Palmisano were stifling, but our offense was
sloppy and flat-footed. We were not moving the ball well, feeds were
thrown that shouldn't have been made, or just thrown
poorly, and our shooting was not sharp. We did open things up a little
and took a 5-1 lead into the early second
quarter. Just when it looked as if we might pull away
we slipped back into some poor habits and we were unable to score for the
remainder of the quarter. In the meantime, our defense became less
effective and they changed to a new face off guy who
gave Pete a hard time. We definitely went into halftime tight and on our
heels.
The offense seemed to loosen up a little at the half, but Stevens kept
pace. We scored 5 goals in the 3rd, but they
hung in there with 3 of their own to keep the score close at 10-7. We
looked good for a while in the 4th, scoring a couple
more and we took a 12-8 lead late into the game. Stevens would not go
away, however, and kept pecking away. They did a nice job creating match
up problems by bringing their top attackman in from
the box in clearing situations and caught us off guard when we tried to match
up on him with his defenseman, but no one every picked up the Middie he left, allowing him to get a late, easy
goal. The wheels came off a bit at the end as we were definitely
scrambling around on defense, showing some of our inexperience at that end of
the field. We had a chance to put them away late when we cleared the ball
up by 2, but the middie
clearing did not realize that we were under 2 minutes and he had to "keep
the ball in the box." He stepped out before we could call Time Out,
so we lost the ball; they went down and scored to go down by 1.
We had another late game defensive stop, but threw the ball away, giving them
another possession. They brought the ball in-bounds from the side with 5
seconds left, threw a long pass to the weak side and their attackman
got off a shot that went in the goal just after the horn blew! They
argued that it went in, but there is no doubt it was not a goal. The horn
is an automatic horn, so if it was a manual horn it
would have been a much more difficult call.
A couple of thoughts from the game. I thought both our relative inexperience and our lack of
game experience showed today. We were not a poised team down the
stretch. They did a better job with their offense of knowing their
identity, getting the right match ups and playing a team game. We are
still trying to figure out rotations and who should play
and we never had much of a rythm on offense. A
close game like today will go a long way in our development, however. You
certainly find out more about yourself in these close games than when you are
up 10-1 at the half. This is fairly typical for
us at this time of year as we get a later start and we missed 2 scrimmages this
year as well. We have responded well in the past and I
expect this group will as well.
A couple of players who did play very well today: Aaron Herter
came up big in the midfield when we needed it, scoring 3
goals on strong dodges. Gabe Wood did another
outstanding job on-ball, sliding, clearing and he scored a goal as well.
Ben Raymond did a nice job on a very quick, aggressive attackman
and did a great job clearing the ball, especially a couple of key times late in
the game in some traffic.
Up next is
Best,
Erin