A couple of observations
from last week's spring trip. We had
beautiful days to practice on M/T/Th/F. The turf is obviously a huge advantage over
indoors, but with the cold, wet weather this spring and darkness setting in
early we have very short practices, some of which are designed more around
staying warm than improving as a team. The warm weather allowed us to get in
quality practices and I believe we came back to Middlebury a much better
team. We played solid first halves
against Conn College and Wesleyan and really
opened up and played well in the second half.
One of the things we face is that teams are jacked up to play us and get
confidence early from any success, so we get into some battles early. If we can withstand some of this early
pressure our depth kicks in for us in the second half and we can pull away as
we did against Conn and Wesleyan. It was nice to see Attackman
Charley Howe play well against Wesleyan as he recorded 4 goals and 2 assists
and had a 5th goal disallowed on a poor offsides
call. He is a tremendous shooter and
can/should be a guy who gets us 3-4 goals a game.
Gettysburg was just a mess. Their field was horrible before the game and
it was a hard, steady rain during the game, so the conditions were awful. No excuses, though, they handled the conditions
much better. They handled and possessed
the ball better on offense, they got the ball up off the ground (or more
accurately, out of the mud), we spent too much time in the penalty box and they
did not, they cleared the ball well and we did not. With all of that we were down by a goal late
in the game and had several fast break opportunities resulting in excellent
scoring opportunities that we did not finish.
We had a time out with the ball and 2 minutes remaining and there were a
couple of interesting and informative scenarios. We had practiced the end of the game
scenarios consistently throughout the year, but we had practiced the scenarios
with our team mixed up in practice. We
had not been personnel specific and we do not have the "go to" guys
that we have had in the past, so the specifics of the late game situation had
not been practiced well enough and the individuals did not understand their
roles well enough. So, we had a decent opportunity, but were fairly inept,
turned the ball over and did not get a shot off. Lesson learned, the
next two days in practice we had "Time out at the end of the game"
practice!
Last night at Union was very wet and very cold
but we played extremely well. Any of our lopsided scores this season happened
late in the game, so it was nice to pull away early and get our subs some
quality minutes. Howe, Saraceni and Greg Bastis all had
three goals as starters in less than half the game. Caleb Holmes was fantastic at defense against
a good attackman, knocking the stick out of his hand
several times. The story was our speed
and athleticism creating many fast/slow break opportunities and finishing many
of them. Brian McGregor dominated on
face offs and wing men Bastis and
Dave Leach converted several
of the face offs directly into goals.
It was a well balanced team effort by all positions and all levels of
players.
We play Amherst at Amherst Saturday at 1:00. They are talented and athletic so it should
be a tough and fun match up.