First, we play
Thoughts on Middlebury vs.
We dominated on
defense. West and Brown took the ball
away consistently. Caleb Holmes was not on-ball as much but quietly had an
outstanding day as well. They generated
a few goals from the midfield and then picked up some unsettled goals. Other than that they did not have many great
opportunities.
We also dominated in the
riding game. Our attack did a great job
hustling on the ride, forcing their long sticks to clear the ball and then we
could jump their long stick with ours and we forced many turnovers.
You might be asking yourself
why we did not beat them by more than 2!
Well, first, they are a very good team and scrappy. We were uncharacteristically beaten at the
face off X, which if we dominated there as usual, the possession game would
have been too much to overcome for them.
Finally, their goalie made
18 saves, keeping them close. We
generated good looks with our hands free but could not put away enough shots to
pull away. We hit him in the head several times and he is very good at his feet
and we put too many shots at his feet.
He did a nice job in the cage, we made it worse
by not shooting great.
Mike Saraceni
continued to play great at attack with 2 goals and 4 assists. He has always
been a nice inside finisher, he has improved dramatically
handling the ball and feeding. His ball
handling and feeding ability has added an entirely new dimension to our
offense. Charley Howe had 3 goals from
the Attack as well. Ben Tobey only had 1 goal and 1 assist, but did a great job
carrying the ball, controlling possessions and picking up ground balls.
An interesting end of the
game could have proven to be quite a dramatic ending. We were up by two with under
two minutes remaining, so we were trying to kill the clock. We turned the ball over, the ball was passed
to West's attackman and John drew a slashing
penalty. It was on the other side of the
field from where we were, but it certainly did not look like a slash from where
I was standing. They had dominated face
offs, so if they score man up they are somewhat likely to at least have a good
shot at winning the ensuing face off and getting a shot at the tying goal. Fortunately, they threw the ball out of
bounds, we were able to throw a loose ball into our end where Tobey and Saraceni gained control
and Dave Leach ran out the clock for the victory.
Despite some moments that
were not as sharp as they might be at our best, it was a game worthy of NCAA
action. It was a great experience for
our guys and a perfect game for our maturing team. Not many of these guys have had critical
roles in the playoff runs of the past couple of years, so better to have had a
tough match up and have to work hard for th
victory.