Middlebury
defeated Colby 12-5 Saturday on a sunny, but cold and blustery day on Kohn
Field. The field crew did a great job with snow removal on Friday as we had an
inch or two accumulation between
The
Colby game was a good opener for us. We
were smothering on defense, giving up 3 of the 5 goals late in the game. When
we did give up goals it was by not executing fundamentals, giving up the top
side dodge by an attackman coming from behind and
giving up the right hand dodge by a middie up
top. Krieger was excellent in and out of
the goal. Making solid saves and then
making himself one of our best offensive options with
his outlet passes.
On
offense our shooting and occasionally our execution was disappointing, but not
to the extent that it would cause alarm.
I think it was more a factor of first-game mistakes. The Colby goalie was very good against us for
the second year in a row and we needed to shoot better to pull away faster than
we did. Charley Howe led us on the day
with 4 goals and 2 assists while Mike Saraceni and
Nick Bastis chipped in 2 apiece. We had a bunch of slow break opportunities,
too many of which ended on a poor shot or stickwork
mistake. Having said that, we moved the
ball well at times and did a great job pushing the ball up the field to create
those break situations.
We will need to execute better in a hurry as we face