Middlebury defeated Tufts yesterday 12-11 in 3OT to advance to the NESCAC Finals today.  Wesleyan defeated Bowdoin 16-15 in OT in the other Semifinal, so Wesleyan will be our opponent.  

It was a cool, rainy day played on the grass of Alumni Stadium.  The field drains well, but does get slick in the rain.  While it was a fairly slippery surface, the conditions did not play much of a part in the game.  Right off the battle of the opening face off it was apparent this was not going to be the same Tufts team that never got off the bus for our first match up.  In that game we were up 9-2 at the half and coasted to a 12-4 victory.  We knew they were much more athletic than that game indicated, especially at the defensive end where they have several big long poles who can take the ball away.  The face offs were a battle all day, with Pete Mellen often controlling the ball, but their wing players doing a better job, balancing out to a virtual tie on the day.  As a matter of fact, most statistics were close to a dead heat, including, obviously, the scoreboard.

If we could have played better in transition on defense, we may have been able to pull away by a couple of goals in the first half.  We got caught trying to sub a few times, however, and they ran the field well on us, so they were able to score 6 by the half without generating a lot of 6 v. 6 offense.  For much of the second half it appeared as if we had settled down by getting in the hole and subbing more efficiently after a 6-6 First Half, and we were able to pull away with a 4-1 3^rd Quarter, sending the game to the 4^th Quarter with the score Middlebury 10 Tufts 7.  The score inched to 11-8 in the latter stages of the 4^th Quarter, but our team did not adjust to the situation well.  We should have had a couple of good, fairly lengthy, yet aggressive possessions and if we generated a great look, maybe score, but at least take the clock down a little.  Instead we pushed to the goal early and lost the ball several times down the stretch.  The score went to 11-9 at 5:57 of the 4^th,  just after we had turned the ball over early in the possession on an unnecessary dodge by an attackman.  We could have taken the clock under 5 minutes easily and completely changed the complexion of the game.  Instead we were now only up by 2.  They scored again to make it a 1 goal game, but we still held the fate of the game in our hands.  We had several opportunities to kill the clock, but could not do so. On one possession Tufts simply stripped Nick Bastis, who does not typically lose the ball easily at all.  On another possession a freshman midfielder looked too much like a freshman and ran himself into a double team, losing the ball before we could take any time off the clock.  In any event, we still had the ball in our possession with only a handful of seconds remaining when Tufts regained possession and threw the ball halfway up the field to an attackman.  The attackman was not a good dodger at all and we were able to get our long stick midfielder on the field and in the hole.  We were matched up 3 v. 3 with our 3 poles on their attack, who are not dodgers, with a 4^th longstick in the hole with them and only seconds remaining, so things looked good.  Their attackman made a move to the goal and our longstick middie felt he needed to leave to slide, just at that time a streaking midfielder from Tufts came through the middle of the field, filling the void left by our sliding longstick and it didn’t looks so good anymore!  The attackman hit him in stride, unfortunately it was their top middie who is deadly with his right hand free and he buried the shot with 2 seconds on the clock, sending the game to OT.

The OT’s were crazy.  Tufts had 2 – 30 second penalties in the OT’s, we had at least 3 pipes on great scoring opportunities, the action was back and forth.  Finally, late in the 3^rd OT Senior Captain Travis Meyer bounced home an outside shot off a right handed sweep to gain the victory.

While everyone made their fair share of mistakes it was a gritty victory, earning us the chance to play for another day.  Bastis was 4/1, Cabrera had 3 goals, Meyer was 2/4, but Gabe Wood was the standout for the day, playing solid on-ball, collecting ground balls and constantly running the field to clear the ball.  Gabe was awarded the game ball.  Just so you know, Gabe was the soccer captain this fall and is being considered for a prestigious NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship for his OUTSTANDING academic record.  One of last year’s captains, Will Rawson, was awarded that scholarship last year and is putting it to good use at Stanford Law School this fall.  Dumb jocks.

The Wesleyan/Bowdoin game was even crazier than ours.  Bowdoin had lost their top attackman, one of the better players in the league, going into the game, but held leads of 9-3 and 10-5 and looked dominant.  Wesleyan would not go away, however, and ended up defeating Bowdoin in OT, 16-15.  Today will be a survival test for Middlebury and Wesleyan, both teams will be gassed.