Middlebury defeated Bowdoin yesterday 11-10 in OT on a beautiful, sunny 70 degree day in Middlebury.  We played our first game in the stadium, and it looks as if we have a little work to do to get used to getting the ball off the grass.  Bowdoin is athletic, scrappy and they do a great job playing hard and going after loose balls.  We always seem to come out of games against them feeling as if we have done an excellent job at 6 v. 6 defense, but they still have goals on the board and it is a close game.  Saturday was no exception to that rule.

The entire game was close, the first half was played fairly close to the vest by both teams.  There was hard play to be sure, but not loose, up and down exciting play.  I thought we shot poorly at times and made their goalie confident and involved early.  That is also our “MO”, however, and has been for a while, so I am happy to live with that problem.  We outshot them approximately 48-27.  We obviously generated many more shots, some of those will be less quality than if we were overly patient and selective with our shots.  If we took 10-15 fewer shots our shooting percentage would be higher, but we would not necessarily score more goals and it would be a dramatic change in philosophy and style.  I prefer an athletic, up-tempo style, generating shots and sometimes it results in higher save totals by the opponent’s goalie.  The question is whether he can continue to make enough saves throughout 4 Quarters of play to keep us off the scoreboard.  Having said that, I wish we would have taken all of the shots we took, but simply placed a few better!  On the other hand, after reviewing the film last night, their goalie did make some nice saves.

The second half was much more open by both teams.  We continued to play very good 6 v. 6 defense. Bowdoin simply has a knack for scoring in unsettled situations.  If there is a loose ball against them you hold your breath because they cut, feed and finish extremely well.  I can only think of a couple of goals that they scored in settled offense and even one of those came off a loose ball that settled into 6 v. 6 but ended immediately with a cut and feed for a goal.  Our offense settled in and were able to generate some quality shots.  The goal scoring was balanced as usual, with the unusual difference that Jim Cabrera did not score a goal.  He struggled with finishing for one of the few times this season.  The good news was that he was still able to contribute with 3 assists.  Two of his assists were to Junior Midfielder Travis Meyer, who had 2 great inside finishes off of Cabrera feeds.  Travis leads our team with 9 assists, many of which are to Cabrera, so it was nice of Jim to return the favor!

We had a shot or two to win the game down the stretch, including one by Cabrera off a time out late in the game which he shot just wide, so we went into OT for the 2nd Year in a row vs. Bowdoin.  We did not score on our first possession in OT, but we were fortunate that when Bowdoin cleared the ball the long stick midfielder cleared it and we were able to get Brian Phinney, one of our LSM’s on the field.  Brian chased him down and took the ball away, creating a loose ball which was passed to Dave Leach.  Dave had several quality opportunities in the game but had not scored.  You could tell by his demeanor even before he crossed the midfield line that he was not to be denied on this opportunity.  He took the ball in a 4 v. 4 situation, beat his man and ripped a low shot for the winning goal!  The difficult thing for Bowdoin was that they were trying to call a time out when they saw the long stick get caught by our long stick.  You have to wait for the player to get in the box before you call a time out and the officials did not hear the coach or did not see him step in the box.  Unfortunately, I think the officials got that one wrong.  The game is still decided on the field, however, as I thought the officials gave the ball to Bowdoin erroneously last year for their winning goal, so it is just a difficult part of sports.

There were some great activities in addition to the game, including the showing of “Keeper of the Kohn”, which was fantastic, and our Alumni Dinner last night.  I will write back later on those events as I have to get ready for the Alumni Game now!