We
defeated Bates on Saturday at Bates 14-6, securing the regular season NESCAC
Championship. As the #1 Seeded team in
the tournament, we received a bye in yesterday's 1st Round Game. It is a crazy tournament schedule, called a
"busses running tournament", because we all finished our regular
season on Saturday, called in our scores and then the #2 - #7 teams were told
where they were playing and whom they were playing on the next day. Tufts and Conn College played on Saturday (I
believe at Tufts) and then again at Tufts on Sunday as the #2 and #7 seeds,
with Tufts winning both games in close games.
Congrats to Dave Campbell for rallying his guys after a tough start to
the season to make the playoffs and play so strong against a very good Tufts
team. Wesleyan was the #3 seed and they
defeated #6 Trinity, who had upset Bowdoin on Saturday to get into the
tournament. #4
We
will play
Quick
wrap up on Saturday's game vs. Bates:
Bates
is a good example of the strength of our conference. They had one conference win all year, but 6
one goal losses, including vs.
Greg
Bastis continued to play hot in the midfield.
He struggled earlier in the season, getting good opportunities, but not
finishing. He consistently played strong
defense and was excellent on ground balls and general athleticism, but just
struggled offensively. He has 5 goals in
the past 2 games with 2 vs. Williams and 3 vs. Bates. You can feel his increased confidence when he
is on the field, hopefully this will carry into the weekend as well. In general, a big difference between our team
right now and the last time we played Amherst is that our midfielders are
untracked now on offense. I believe we
may have had one goal from Bastis when we last played Amherst and the remainder
of the goals were scored by the attack.
By contrast, against Bates 10 of the 14 goals were scored by 6 different
midfielders. Travis Meyer had a couple
of goals and is coming into his own as a threat to score 1 or 2 every
game. He is excellent off-ball and had a
nice goal on a feed from Andrew Giordano.
Gio is playing great as well, another threat to have a couple of goals,
but also a couple of assists every game.
His vision is excellent and he is in double figures in assists from the
midfield. Leach is playing strong now
also after missing 3 games and limping through a couple more earlier in the
year. He had a goal and a great assist
on a play which highlighted our midfield play on Saturday. Gio put a great move on his defender,
buckling his knees and drawing the slide off Bastis who was on the crease. Gio made the easy pass to Leach up top who
started to drive to the cage right handed.
The defender left Bastis who followed the slide, received a perfect pass
from Leach and drilled the shot into the low corner. The best thing about the play was that Bates
had not been sliding from the crease all day and just happened to on that play
and the middies adjusted nicely.
Gabe
Wood won the game ball against Bates. He
is the defenseman who is filling in for John West after John went down in the
Trinity game with an achilles injury that will keep him out for the remainder
of the season. Gabe is a strong athlete,
starter on the soccer team, and did a great job against Williams and
Bates. We do not lose much with him
starting, what we lose is depth. The next guys coming in are excellent, but
obviously losing West is a blow. We have
handled injuries well this season, with middies stepping up in Leach's and
Duke's absence earlier in the year and now the D will have to step up without
West.