We came up with another solid NESCAC
win yesterday at home against the Mules on an absolutely gorgeous day on
Youngman Field. As I mentioned in my last email, Colby was coming off of
an impressive 12-7 win over #5 Endicott and has been playing some great
lacrosse so far this year. They have two attackmen
that are as good as anyone we've seen and they play harder as a team than
anyone we've faced up until this point. Throw in a good goalie and a very
good face off man and they're capable of beating anyone in the league.
Defensively we had a nice game plan
put together which included us making it difficult for their top attackmen to get the ball in their 6v6 offense. This
seemed to take them out of what they wanted to do and forced them to initiate
more with their midfield. Our defensive middies did an excellent job with
their on ball defense and executed the fundamentals
of our defense very well. With Jeff Begin and Alex Giammarco
both out for a few more games, we've had to move both Brooks Toth and Bart Witmer from their
typical offensive roles in the midfield to the defensive end for the time
being. Matt Virtue and Zack Harwood have both settled into their roles as
our top two defensive midfielders and have been doing a great job between the
restraining lines for us clearing the ball.
We had another balanced scoring
effort with 7 different goal scorers in the game. Leading the way were Skyler Hopkins (4 goals), Mike Stone (3g, 2a), Tom Petty (3
goals), and Pete Smith (1g, 3a). Our offense very much revolves around
our guys sharing the ball and being on the same page in terms of their
spacing. There isn't a whole lot of scripted movement but there
is a good deal of reading the defense as well as the other offensive
players to make sure we're constantly keeping pressure on the defense.
The nice thing about having such an experienced group is that when someone is
out of place or holding onto the ball too long it's pretty apparent and usually
it doesn't take the coaches to get on someone about it.
Another area that we were going to
keep a close eye on going into the game was face offs. Their face off man
is one of, if not the best guy we've seen and Dave was able to win 50% of
the draws and give us enough possessions to put some points up on the board.
Finally, we knew that ground balls
were going to play a big role in this game. Colby is probably the best
ground ball team we've faced and this is a part of the game that we take a lot
of pride in. As it turns out, they out groundballed
us on the day by a decent amount and it was most noticeable on our
defensive end. Some of our best stops of the day went
unnoticed after we would put the ball on the ground and Colby
would come back up with it. This is an area that we can improve on
in the coming weeks.
Overall this is another very solid
win over an up and coming team and gets us to 3-1 in the league.
This is going to be a big week for us with road games at Amherst
on Wednesday and then at Bowdoin on Saturday. Both teams won this weekend and as
usual we'll be expecting their best shot when we roll into town.