We defeated Amherst 13-12 on Saturday. It was a great day, sunny and 60’s and an excellent crowd and they were treated to an exciting game.  Amherst jumped out on us 3-1and they looked tough.  They had only lost one game, 9-2 vs. Tufts, in which they did not play well, but we knew they would be very good.  They have a great senior class, along with an outstanding Junior Long Stick Midfielder and one of the best players in the league is their Sophomore Attackman.  This group of players played us tight in a 7-6 regular season game last year and then we beat them 7-2 in the league semi-finals.  So, it was not surprising that we had a one goal game; it was surprising that it was more of an offensive game.  As last year’s scores indicate, they have a strong, athletic defense and a very good goalie and scoring on them has not been easy for the past 3 years.  In fact, two years ago at Amherst, they almost defeated us after dominating our offense in the first half.  The surprising stat of the day is that we outshot them 48-28.  The 28 shots by them is not surprising, but the fact that we generated 48 shots (32 in the first half!) was surprising and encouraging.  Their goalie came up with 15 saves; in a couple of stretches he made some truly great saves that probably kept them in the game when we might have otherwise pulled away.

In a nutshell, the flow of the game was Amherst going up early 3-1; we catch up and make a run to go up 8-4 late in the first half.  They get a man up goal and a late goal, just 3 seconds before the half on a midfield dodge to narrow the score to 8-6 at the half.  The second half was played evenly and we were not able to pull away.  Late in the game it got really tight and it took a couple of big plays for us to pull off the victory.  Aaron Herter stepped up late in the game, scoring twice in one possession with only one of the goals counting!  He went right handed down the alley and ripped a shot that I thought went in the far corner of the goal.  The official nearest to me agreed, but the other two disagreed, and they prevailed.  We retained possession and Herter got the ball back and scored again, putting us up 12-11.  Amherst came back and scored with a little over 2 minutes remaining to tie the score on a great feed by their top attackman.  He dodged left handed and drew the slide, the team defense was excellent, covering up for the slide, but the attackman was able to find the farthest middie whom we had left to help on the slide and he took a nice bounce shot to tie the score.  We bounced back with a little over a minute remaining on a left handed shot by Junior Midfielder, Travis Meyer.  Travis had a bead on the upper corner a couple of times during the game but narrowly missed, but this time he placed his shot perfectly in the upper corner, getting the tell-tale “phwap (or is it fwap?) sound the ball makes in the upper corner!  The game was far from over.  We gained possession of the ball and carried behind the goal in an attempt to run out the clock.  Unfortunately, an attackman got too close to the middie with the ball and his defender jumped in a double team and Amherst got the ball back.  They got the ball to their top guy who is lightning fast and he went hard to the goal left handed from X.  The attackman stumbled and Ed Brown got caught up in his legs and received a 30 second penalty for a push with 37 seconds remaining in the game.  They had some success in man up during the game, so there was certainly some tension.  We were going to shut off their top player, but he lined up on the crease anyway, so it was easy to shut him off.  We’re not sure if they thought he was going to get shut off and did not want to waste time adjusting their formation, or if they were trying to find him on the crease for an easy goal.  In any case, we stayed on him until Mike Murray needed to come off late as they changed formations.  They got off a bounce shot from up top, the same shot and same spot they had scored on a couple of times during the game, but Palmisano came up with a big save.  The ball bounced high up in the air, just off to the side of the goal and everyone held their breath as the seconds ticked off to zero, hoping it would not be batted into the goal from the air!

Amherst was an excellent team who played hard, we were happy to have the win and to have been involved in a great game.

Jim Cabrera received the game ball, scoring 4 goals, despite Amherst’s efforts to disrupt him by shutting him off at times during the game.  Pete Mellen again played great, winning 20 of 28 face offs.  Most of the face offs were won against their talented Long Stick Midfielder.  Amherst aligned with the LSM facing off and another defender on the wing in an attempt to take the ball away from Peter when (not if) he won the face off.  While it was an excellent strategy and one that worked at times, Pete handled the pressure well, figured out how to handle the pressure and went on to win over 70% of the face offs.  Henry Sheehan also played well coming off the bench at attack with 2 goals and an assist, while Leach and Meyer paced the Midfield with 2 goals each, all coming on great dodging and shooting.  Nick Bastis had one goal at attack and was the primary victim of excellent goaltending as he created a number of excellent scoring opportunities for himself, shot well, but could only get one past the goalie.  On a given day, Nick might have ended up with 4 or 5 goals.

It does not get any easier for us as we travel to Tufts on Wednesday to play a very talented Tufts team.  They are coming off of two losses in a row to Bowdoin and Williams, while missing their top player.  We expect he may be back by Wednesday.  With or without him they are very good.  The game is at Tufts at 6:00pm.