Middlebury was defeated 7-4 by
After the 3-0 start, our defense settled down, figured them
out and played superbly for the remainder of the game. They have 3 senior attackmen but they tend
to generate a lot of offense from their midfielders and that is where we
improved the most over the course of the game. We did a nice job of
mixing up doubling with fake sliding with sliding to get them to move the ball
and then recovering. The nice thing for us is that those are all
spontaneous decisions made by the players on the field, not defensive calls
coming from coaches. Several times early we were
playing team defense as if it were just a drill, running through a prescribed
set of slides and they made us pay with some good looks. As we settled
down we limited their quality looks and then Alex Palmisano
made some excellent saves when they did get off quality shots. One of the
things we could not control quite as much was the quality and time of their
possessions. Their possession time was dominant I am sure,
they were much more disciplined about their possessions than we were.
Ultimately, the difference in the game defensively between a win and a loss was
the quick, 3 goal start and the play of their top attackman,
who scored 3, 2 on nice dodges. He was the one offensive player on either
team who played consistently well, both playing within himself and coming up
with a couple of big-time goals.
Our offense was fairly inept, as the score indicates,
generating a shot total in the mid-20's that we might typically generate in a
half. There are several reasons for this outside of just our
offense. A couple that I already mentioned are
the disparity at the face off X as well as their quality possessions, keeping
the ball from our offensive end. We cleared the ball effectively (16-18),
but we also had a few turnovers in transition once the ball was
cleared that kept the ball out of our end. At times
those turnovers were due to decision making or physical mistakes, at times it
was due to excellent athleticism on their part. The low score might
indicate two deliberate, boring teams, but both teams did try to get out and run, the athleticism between the lines for both teams
cancelled out any advantage, however, so there were very few easy transition
opportunities. When we did get the ball on offense
they did a nice job with their team defense. We have
seldom, if ever, executed very well on offense when we have played them
early in the season. We are not sharp enough, nor are we patient
enough. We have played very well on offense against them in the
Championship game when we are more experienced, more patient, smarter and
sharper. This growth has never come easy and often is the result of a
sharpened focus from losing to them early in the season! We will find out
a lot about this team today at practice and Saturday at
Not a lot of bright spots on Wednesday, but I do think
Ben Raymond played well on defense and first year player, Sophomore Frank Granara did an excellent job at short stick defensive
midfield. He played great on-ball defense, scrapped well, cleared well
and scored a nice goal off of a turnover.
I look forward to seeing many of you at
Best,
Erin