Middlebury beat Union on Tuesday 8-7.  The game did not have a great flow,
which is fairly typical of a game at Union.  They have an excellent goalie
who made 31 saves.  The first half ended up with a solid effort and we were
leading 8-4.  It is difficult to pinpoint one problem in the second half.
Possibly a lack of 100% focus combined with the goalie stuffing us.  We
continued to generate decent shots but could not make them fall.  They just
hung around long enough to put a scare into us by the end of the game.  It
looked as if we would end the game with the ball ahead by 8-6 as we went man
up after killing several minutes off the clock.  However, an attackman stood
flat footed in the man up situation and threw the ball away, they went down
and scored with only about 30 seconds remaining.  We controlled the face off
and were able to end the game with the ball.  The bright spot in the game is
that we played solid defense (admittedly against a weaker opponent!) and our
freshman goalie bounced back from the Springfield debacle and played great.
Another bright spot was Grayson Fertig who was late getting started due to
hockey but has moved up to our first midfield line and had 2 goals,
including what turned out to be the game winning 8th goal.  More
importantly, he played great defense, ran the field, smacked some people and
picked up ground balls.  He was one of the guys setting the kind of tempo we
have been accustomed to, but have not seen recently.  Practice was great
Monday and we are expecting the same today.

We play at 2:00pm Saturday at Amherst.  They are solid with an outstanding
goalie.  If our defense played poorly vs. Springfield and needed to respond
it is our offense that needs to respond vs. a great goalie this Saturday.
Offense is where our experience lies so we expect them to do so.

Erin