Middlebury
defeated Tufts yesterday 12-11 in 3OT to advance to the NESCAC Finals today.
Wesleyan defeated Bowdoin 16-15 in OT in the other Semifinal, so Wesleyan
will be our opponent.
It was a
cool, rainy day played on the grass of Alumni Stadium. The field drains
well, but does get slick in the rain. While it was a fairly
slippery surface, the conditions did not play much of a part in the
game. Right off the battle of the opening face
off it was apparent this was not going to be the same Tufts team that never got
off the bus for our first match up. In that game
we were up 9-2 at the half and coasted to a 12-4 victory. We knew they
were much more athletic than that game indicated, especially at the defensive
end where they have several big long poles who can take the ball away.
The face offs were a battle all day, with Pete Mellen
often controlling the ball, but their wing players doing a better job,
balancing out to a virtual tie on the day. As a matter
of fact, most statistics were close to a dead heat, including,
obviously, the scoreboard.
If we could
have played better in transition on defense, we may have been able to pull away
by a couple of goals in the first half. We got
caught trying to sub a few times, however, and they ran the field well on us,
so they were able to score 6 by the half without generating a lot of 6 v. 6
offense. For much of the second half it appeared as if we had settled
down by getting in the hole and subbing more efficiently after a 6-6 First
Half, and we were able to pull away with a 4-1 3rd Quarter, sending
the game to the 4th Quarter with the score Middlebury 10 Tufts
7. The score inched to 11-8 in the latter stages of the 4th
Quarter, but our team did not adjust to the situation well. We should
have had a couple of good, fairly lengthy, yet aggressive possessions and if we
generated a great look, maybe score, but at least take the clock down a little.
Instead we pushed to the goal early and lost the
ball several times down the stretch. The score went to 11-9 at 5:57 of
the 4th, just after we had turned the
ball over early in the possession on an unnecessary dodge by an attackman. We could have taken the clock under 5
minutes easily and completely changed the complexion of the game. Instead
we were now only up by 2. They scored again to
make it a 1 goal game, but we still held the fate of
the game in our hands. We had several opportunities to kill the clock,
but could not do so. On one possession Tufts simply
stripped Nick Bastis, who does not typically lose the
ball easily at all. On another possession a
freshman midfielder looked too much like a freshman and ran himself into a
double team, losing the ball before we could take any time off the clock.
In any event, we still had the ball in our possession with only a handful of
seconds remaining when Tufts regained possession and threw the ball halfway up
the field to an attackman. The attackman was not a good dodger at all and we were able to
get our long stick midfielder on the field and in the hole. We were
matched up 3 v. 3 with our 3 poles on their attack,
who are not dodgers, with a 4th longstick
in the hole with them and only seconds remaining, so things looked good.
Their attackman made a move to the goal and our longstick middie felt he needed
to leave to slide, just at that time a streaking
midfielder from Tufts came through the middle of the field, filling the void
left by our sliding longstick and it didn’t looks so
good anymore! The attackman hit him in stride,
unfortunately it was their top middie who is deadly with his right hand free and he buried the
shot with 2 seconds on the clock, sending the game to OT.
The OT’s
were crazy. Tufts had 2 – 30 second penalties in the OT’s, we had at
least 3 pipes on great scoring opportunities, the
action was back and forth. Finally, late in the 3rd
OT Senior Captain Travis Meyer bounced home an outside shot off a right handed
sweep to gain the victory.
While
everyone made their fair share of mistakes it was a
gritty victory, earning us the chance to play for another day. Bastis was 4/1, Cabrera had 3
goals, Meyer was 2/4, but Gabe Wood was the standout
for the day, playing solid on-ball, collecting ground balls and constantly
running the field to clear the ball. Gabe was awarded the game ball. Just so
you know, Gabe was the soccer captain this fall and
is being considered for a prestigious NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship for his
OUTSTANDING academic record. One of last year’s captains, Will Rawson, was awarded that
scholarship last year and is putting it to good use at
The Wesleyan/Bowdoin
game was even crazier than ours. Bowdoin had
lost their top attackman, one of the better players
in the league, going into the game, but held leads of
9-3 and 10-5 and looked dominant. Wesleyan would not go away, however,
and ended up defeating Bowdoin in OT, 16-15. Today will be a survival
test for Middlebury and Wesleyan, both teams will be gassed.