A wild one took place down in
Saratoga yesterday afternoon with the Panthers coming out on top 18-15.
In short, the game was back and forth in the first half with it ending up tied
at 9 going into the break. It's hard to imagine giving up nine goals in a
half but when you combine some transition opportunities that they cashed in on,
3 man up goals, and a few bread an
butter type goals for their top attackman you can get
to 9 pretty quickly. Not that we were giving Pete Britt any help during
the first half but he also didn't steal any for us which we always are hoping
he's able to do a few times a game.
Offensively we did some good things
but didn't capitalize on us holding them to 5 for 12 clearing in the first half
and a 13-5 advantage in face offs. We let them off the hook with some
unforced errors when we could have been pulling away.
In the 2nd half we rattled off 7
straight goals to take a 16-9 lead in the 4th quarter. We tightened
things up on defense during this time and had their heads spinning when we were
on offense. During this run Mike Stone scored 3 of his career high 7
goals and Skyler Hopkins scored 2 while assisting on
another. It helped that the officials finally threw a flag
against Skidmore in the 3rd quarter, it had
been 7 quarters dating back to the 3rd quarter against RPI since we had been
man up. We ended up scoring 3 man up goals in the 3rd
yesterday.
Another guy who has stepped up his
game recently is Tom Petty. He finished with 3 goals yesterday and has
been doing everything we've asked so far this year. He's splitting time
right now with Dave Hild and Jack Masur
but is being very productive when he's in the game.
One player to get on the
radar is sophomore Andrew Conner. AC as we all call him spent almost all
of last year on the sideline after having surgery on his wrist at the beginning
of the season. When he came back to the team during the playoffs he was
so far behind everyone else that it was difficult to see where he'd fit in
going forward. Basically being a freshman all over again this year in
terms of experience, he still had a lot to learn in terms of what we are
trying to do offensively. Let's just say that he's figured it out and it
doesn't hurt that he's 6-1, 200 and shoots the ball very, very
hard. He probably took 4 or 5 runs for us yesterday with the 2nd
midfield line and had a great look to David Hild for
a goal and then scored his first career goal on our 18th of the day.
Expect AC to be in the scoring column more often for the rest of the season.
Finally, in case you're wondering
how an 18-10 lead with 5 minutes to play turns into an 18-15 game, we just took
our foot off the gas a little bit and that's all they needed to climb back
in. We started subbing heavily going into the 18th goal but after we
scored that one we had worked in a few new defensemen,
3 new attack......
When they scored their 11th goal
with 4:30 to go we still thought we were in good shape and proceeded to get in
some more of our back ups as they have worked hard
all year and have earned a chance to get out there. As we're
replacing our goalie and another defenseman we end up with too many guys on the
field and before we can call timeout they blow the whistle for the face off and
award the ball to Skidmore. They come down and score in 10 seconds.
Still up 18-12, we should be ok. We figure we'll send Dave Campbell back
out to hopefully win the face off and kill some clock but he ends up taking a
penalty and they score again within 7 seconds. Now they're man up,
and it's 18-13. We sub back in all of our starters and then they proceed
to score another goal at the 2:30 mark and ten seconds later when they're
man up again for yet another unnecessary roughness call against Dave
Campbell. Sometimes Dave just hits kids too hard and the officials think
they need to call something.
All in all, it was a good 3rd
quarter and 2/3 of the 4th. Beyond that we didn't play like a great
lacrosse team. We still have some things to work on but this group
hasn't let me down once this year in terms of showing up with a great attitude
for practice.
Time to get ready for the Trinity
Bantams, winners of the past two regular season match ups against us. After starting to review some film of them this
afternoon, I'll recommend that if any of you are planning to attend the game on
Saturday, be sure to bring a cup of coffee or something caffeinated
as they've been putting me to sleep when they have the ball on offense. I
also don't think we'll see 33 goals scored this Saturday like we did yesterday
but hopefully our offense can keep putting them in the back of the net!