Part I:
More
details tomorrow, but we beat Tufts today 17-6. Very tight 1st Quarter
with excellent possessions on their part and some poor possessions/good
saves on their part. Great turnaround in the 2nd and 3rd Quarters with us
pulling away 6-3 at the half and running away in the 3rd. They play very
hard and smart and we had to play well to pull away.
I'll fill in the details later.
Part II:
As
promised, a few more details on the Tufts game. The 1st Quarter was
marked by patient possessions on their part resulting in some nice shots and
two goals. On our part we generated enough shots to take the lead, but
the
goalie made 9 1st Quarter saves but only a few were on quality shots. We
were forcing the shots too quickly in the 1st so we had no possession time
and they had all the rythm in their favor. They
were winning 2-1 after the
quarter and it was still a 3-3 game with about 9 minutes left in the 2nd
Quarter. We then had a couple of nice possessions which ended in Zach
Herbert feeding Mike Saraceni on identical
cuts/feeds/finishes in two
consecutive possessions. Saraceni is our 4th attackman and he gave us the
lift we needed with these two great cuts and excellent finishes. While
this
was going on we settled down on defense and did not allow many quality
shots. Krieger made some nice saves in the first half, ending the half
with
8 saves. Sebby Astrada,
Caleb Holmes and Nick Lesher all did an excellent
job on and off the ball at close D, staying on their feeders
hands and
taking the ball away without overplaying. They kept Tufts from scoring an
even strength goal from 44 seconds left in the 1st Q until the
the 4th Q.
The second half was taken over by Seeley and Dunn offensively. Our
possessions were much better and the shots were placed better. Seeley was
driving up high left handed and rolling back into his right ripping right
handed shots. He has a way of stepping up big when we need it. Frissora
was a stud on defense and between the lines again, scoring two goals on
coast to coast runs after stripping the ball. He
is getting us a bunch of
extra possessions per game with ground balls as well. His
first coast to
coast came after a pretty impressive take away by a short stick defender
against a very good middie.
Brian McGregor battled a tough athlete at the face off X all day and ended
up winning 13/20.
We'll be pushed this weekend up in
we have to turn around and travel to
and down this year, not a lot of great offensive players, but athletic
players. Their defense and goalie are excellent. They just beat
Wesleyan
last weekend 12-1. Then we turn around and play Colby on Sunday.
They have
not lost in the league yet. They also have a strong defense and senior
goalie. They are similar to Tufts on offense, taking the air out of the
ball, but a better defensive team with a better goalie. They also play an
unorthodox defense. They shut off one of the top players (Dunn or Seeley)
and play man down with the other 5. The man down is 4 long sticks
rotating
hard on the perimeter with a short stick wandering around to help if someone
gets beat. We will need to draw on our physical and emotional reserves to
get it done this weekend.