The
Panthers played back to back games this weekend
starting in
Tufts plays
great team defense and has an excellent sophomore goalie to make up for any
mistakes defensively. We controlled the possession time in the game and
generated a lot of good scoring chances but their
goalie came up with big save after big save. Their offense made enough
plays to win by scoring a man up goal and taking advantage of a few defensive
breakdowns on our part. Both teams played with a lot of emotion and heart
as the game went back and forth from start to finish.
Pete Mellen was a force facing off once again and has been
simply dominant this season. Offensively we were paced by Mike Stone's 3 goals. One came off of a
Pete Mellen feed where Mike had a great handle
on a ball fed below his knees and roofed it from about 8 yards
out. For those of you who haven't seen us
play Mike is the top center middie in our 3-3 on man
up. When teams try and play the crease as
well as Mike with a string he has been able to step in and make them pay.
He rang one off the pipe into the corner of the goal for his second goal of the
day. Finally the most spectacular play of the
game came off of a great ride by our attack that put the ball on the ground
with less than a minute to play in the game. We were down by a goal, 6-5
at the time. We got the ball to Mike in transition, he fell to his knees
at about 10 yards, crawled on his knees for a step (as I was about to call
timeout) and then stuck a shot in the upper corner from his knees!
Tufts won
the face off in overtime (on a phantom kicking the cross call) and ended up
scoring in that possession. As our team came off the field after losing
its 4th league game in overtime I knew we were going
to win on Sunday. By the time we brought it up only a few minutes after
the game had ended the team had completely moved on to what we needed to do on
Sunday.