We defeated Bates on Saturday at Bates 14-6, securing the regular season NESCAC Championship. As the #1 Seeded team in the tournament, we received a bye in yesterday's 1st Round Game. It is a crazy tournament schedule, called a "busses running tournament", because we all finished our regular season on Saturday, called in our scores and then the #2 - #7 teams were told where they were playing and whom they were playing on the next day. Tufts and Conn College played on Saturday (I believe at Tufts) and then again at Tufts on Sunday as the #2 and #7 seeds, with Tufts winning both games in close games. Congrats to Dave Campbell for rallying his guys after a tough start to the season to make the playoffs and play so strong against a very good Tufts team. Wesleyan was the #3 seed and they defeated #6 Trinity, who had upset Bowdoin on Saturday to get into the tournament. #4 Amherst defeated #5 Bowdoin at Amherst. Bowdoin had been thumped 11-2 by Amherst last week, so a good showing by Bowdoin who had to play at Trinity Saturday and then at Amherst on Sunday. They lost to Amherst 6-5 on Sunday. So, for the fourth straight year, after making all of these teams travel all over New England on Saturday night in the spirit of inclusion in the playoffs, the Final 4 will again be the top 4 seeds in the tournament!

We will play Amherst in the Saturday game at Noon and Tufts will play Wesleyan in the second game. This is a very strong Final 4 and the games should be great. We had a tight 7-6 win over Amherst earlier in the year, playing great on defense, obviously not as well on offense. Our offense has come a long way since that game, so it should prove to be a great match up. They are deep, fast, athletic and excellent at the defensive end. They are dangerous on offense as well, but have not scored a lot of goals consistently throughout the year. Dangerous team, however.

Quick wrap up on Saturday's game vs. Bates:

Bates is a good example of the strength of our conference. They had one conference win all year, but 6 one goal losses, including vs. Amherst and Springfield. They do not look like a team that should be at the bottom of the conference, you just have to win your close games to stay in contention. We got off to a little bit of a slow start, just a few turnovers clearing, so not enough possessions, couple of saves by their goalie, but very good opportunities and very solid defense. Krieger had a great day in the cage, playing with energy, making big saves and getting us starting with outlets. His play will be critical during the upcoming NESCAC playoffs.

Greg Bastis continued to play hot in the midfield. He struggled earlier in the season, getting good opportunities, but not finishing. He consistently played strong defense and was excellent on ground balls and general athleticism, but just struggled offensively. He has 5 goals in the past 2 games with 2 vs. Williams and 3 vs. Bates. You can feel his increased confidence when he is on the field, hopefully this will carry into the weekend as well. In general, a big difference between our team right now and the last time we played Amherst is that our midfielders are untracked now on offense. I believe we may have had one goal from Bastis when we last played Amherst and the remainder of the goals were scored by the attack. By contrast, against Bates 10 of the 14 goals were scored by 6 different midfielders. Travis Meyer had a couple of goals and is coming into his own as a threat to score 1 or 2 every game. He is excellent off-ball and had a nice goal on a feed from Andrew Giordano. Gio is playing great as well, another threat to have a couple of goals, but also a couple of assists every game. His vision is excellent and he is in double figures in assists from the midfield. Leach is playing strong now also after missing 3 games and limping through a couple more earlier in the year. He had a goal and a great assist on a play which highlighted our midfield play on Saturday. Gio put a great move on his defender, buckling his knees and drawing the slide off Bastis who was on the crease. Gio made the easy pass to Leach up top who started to drive to the cage right handed. The defender left Bastis who followed the slide, received a perfect pass from Leach and drilled the shot into the low corner. The best thing about the play was that Bates had not been sliding from the crease all day and just happened to on that play and the middies adjusted nicely.

Gabe Wood won the game ball against Bates. He is the defenseman who is filling in for John West after John went down in the Trinity game with an achilles injury that will keep him out for the remainder of the season. Gabe is a strong athlete, starter on the soccer team, and did a great job against Williams and Bates. We do not lose much with him starting, what we lose is depth. The next guys coming in are excellent, but obviously losing West is a blow. We have handled injuries well this season, with middies stepping up in Leach's and Duke's absence earlier in the year and now the D will have to step up without West.