We moved to
8-0 yesterday and more importantly 6-0 in the NESCAC after a close win down at Amherst.
The fans on hand for this one were treated to an exciting game with plenty of
highlight reel goals, saves, and some big hits.
We jumped
out to a pretty comfortable lead in the first half after Tom Petty scored three
consecutive goals to put us up 5-2. We would stretch the lead to 10-4 at
the half with two goals from Jim Cabrera, and two big time shots from Mike
Stone. The second of which came in an unsettled situation when Amherst matched up one of
their long poles on Mike, he drove left handed, stopped, rolled
back right handed and launched one from 14 yards in the upper corner. It
looked effortless but he definitely generated a lot of torque on that shot.
We would
open up the scoring in the 2nd half as Amherst
decided their best option defensively would be to put long poles on Stone and
Cabrera in the midfield and put a short stick on Tom Petty at attack. Tom
would end up with 3 more goals in the 2nd half and made the most of his
match up against a shortie.
Unfortunately
after we opened up the lead to 11-4 it was all Amherst for the rest of the 3rd quarter and
for about half of the 4th. Amherst
has some talented offensive players and started generating some great looks at
the cage. They also took advantage of some failed clears on our part as
well as some unforced turnovers offensively. All of this led to Amherst making it a 11-10 game with 11 minutes to play. On the ensuing
face off we took a penalty and went man down for a minute. Fortunately we
killed the penalty and were able to find Alex Giammarco
releasing over the midline as we were clearing the ball. Alex streaked
down the sideline and after realizing that nobody was picking him up he decided
to go to the cage. He had lost some angle while running down the
sideline and actually used a swim move on one of their defenseman to get back
to the middle of the field left handed and ripped a shot right past the
keeper's ear from about 11 yards out. After the entire team had
been tightening up for the 2nd half it was nice to see someone step up and make
a play. Gio would end up winning the game
ball in large part because of this play but also because of his excellent work
on face offs and at defensive middie.
Pete Britt
was very good in goal, we definitely left him hanging out to dry on a
number of occasions and they have some guys who can flat out shoot the
ball. If I'm not mistaken, all of their goals were from within 7 yards.
James Guay and John Bambrick
were excellent and put the ball on the ground all day for us.
Last but
not least, Yanik Bababekov
played some significant minutes for us as our back up long stick middie and made a few solid fundamental plays for us that
helped us win the game. The reason I mention Yanik
is that I think it will make some of you think back to your days on our
team. Yanik is a senior who has been with the
team for 4 years and who comes to practice every day with a smile on his face
and works his tail off. When Glenn Bickley went
down during the Williams game, we bumped Yanik into
the playing rotation and he was ready when his name was called. Every
good team needs a few guys like Yanik who epitomize
being selfless and we're lucky to have him!
Rensselaer on Tuesday, they're 8-2 and have surprised some people this
year. We'll have our hands full and look forward to the next challenge!