Middlebury was defeated 7-4 by Gettysburg at Gettysburg yesterday in a game that looked all too familiar to veteran fans of this rivalry.  We have gone to Gettysburg on spring trip for a while now and it is an excellent early season test for us, as well as a now comfortable trip.  After practice on Tuesday we take the bus on a battlefield tour for any interested players; I do it every year and never tire of the tour and never leave anything less than awestruck.  On Tuesday night we attend a team dinner at The Antrim, a beautiful Inn in Taneytown, MD owned and operated by the Mollett's, parents of Brandon Mollett, '98.  If you are ever in the area, do yourself a favor and stay at The Antrim!  The team and any parents in the area were treated to a Filet Mignon dinner due to the generosity of the Mollett's and a donor parent!  The lacrosse was not as special.

Gettysburg has often jumped out on us early.  One can surmise the usual reasons, not off the bus yet, early season, etc, but it does not make it any easier.  I think they are simply farther along and more prepared for this type of game, while this game itself is the test that gets us to that level.  In any event, they jumped up 3-0 early.  One of the early keys and a key that remained constant was that they controlled the Face Off X (now a 4 x 4 square of a contrasting color, by the way, but somehow "controlling the X" reads better!).  Just as this game is a great test for our team that will make us better, it was a great test for Pete Mellen, who has typically dominated Face Offs, even against the best.  Their face off guy is a great face off midfielder and athlete and he simply dominated us, winning 10 of 15 face offs.  So, when they make the early run it is sustained by the face offs, a feature of games we are not used to seeing.  Throughout the game it also makes it difficult for us to garner any momentum.

After the 3-0 start, our defense settled down, figured them out and played superbly for the remainder of the game.  They have 3 senior attackmen but they tend to generate a lot of offense from their midfielders and that is where we improved the most over the course of the game.  We did a nice job of mixing up doubling with fake sliding with sliding to get them to move the ball and then recovering.  The nice thing for us is that those are all spontaneous decisions made by the players on the field, not defensive calls coming from coaches.  Several times early we were playing team defense as if it were just a drill, running through a prescribed set of slides and they made us pay with some good looks.  As we settled down we limited their quality looks and then Alex Palmisano made some excellent saves when they did get off quality shots.  One of the things we could not control quite as much was the quality and time of their possessions.  Their possession time was dominant I am sure, they were much more disciplined about their possessions than we were.  Ultimately, the difference in the game defensively between a win and a loss was the quick, 3 goal start and the play of their top attackman, who scored 3, 2 on nice dodges.  He was the one offensive player on either team who played consistently well, both playing within himself and coming up with a couple of big-time goals.

Our offense was fairly inept, as the score indicates, generating a shot total in the mid-20's that we might typically generate in a half.  There are several reasons for this outside of just our offense.  A couple that I already mentioned are the disparity at the face off X as well as their quality possessions, keeping the ball from our offensive end.  We cleared the ball effectively (16-18), but we also had a few turnovers in transition once the ball was cleared that kept the ball out of our end.  At times those turnovers were due to decision making or physical mistakes, at times it was due to excellent athleticism on their part.  The low score might indicate two deliberate, boring teams, but both teams did try to get out and run, the athleticism between the lines for both teams cancelled out any advantage, however, so there were very few easy transition opportunities.  When we did get the ball on offense they did a nice job with their team defense.  We have seldom, if ever, executed very well on offense when we have played them early in the season.  We are not sharp enough, nor are we patient enough.  We have played very well on offense against them in the Championship game when we are more experienced, more patient, smarter and sharper.  This growth has never come easy and often is the result of a sharpened focus from losing to them early in the season!  We will find out a lot about this team today at practice and Saturday at Connecticut College.

Not a lot of bright spots on Wednesday, but I do think Ben Raymond played well on defense and first year player, Sophomore Frank Granara did an excellent job at short stick defensive midfield.  He played great on-ball defense, scrapped well, cleared well and scored a nice goal off of a turnover.

I look forward to seeing many of you at Conn. College on Saturday!

Best,
Erin