Middlebury defeated Endicott 15-12 and will face Wesleyan,
10-7, winners over Springfield tonight, in the NCAA Quarterfinals Wednesday at
home at 4:00. It did not always look as if there would be another day to
play during the Endicott game today! I felt as if we had a couple of
excellent days of practice, especially Friday's practice. Our demeanor
was excellent in the locker room and in warm ups before the game, but I do not
believe the players were ready for Endicott to play as hard and well as they
did. The scout on Endicott made me think that they had excellent players
who could score on offense and a goalie who was very aggressive and
unconventional. The potential combination of a goalie making big saves
and an opportunistic offense, coupled with the expectation that we
"should" beat them soundly, presented a challenge. We were not
always up to the challenge. The defense was particularly disappointing
with a "deer in the headlights" look at many times. At other
times they overplayed as an antidote to our ills, but that only compounded
problems. They were too good of an offensive team to keep off the board,
but we could have played much better on defense and in the goal.
Their goalie took us out of an offensive rythm early in the game, coming up
with some quality saves early, while they scored a few goals. The 1st
Quarter saw us outshooting them 18-4 but finding ourselves losing 3-2. We
were able to even the score at the half, giving us the feeling that we could
start over from scratch. We came out ready to play, increasing our lead
to 8-5 in the 3rd Quarter. Unfortunately, you could almost hear the audible
sigh of relief when we built our lead, as if we had the game in hand, but
Endicott was not going away. This was a theme that would repeat itself
later in the game. In the 4th Quarter we made a run to go up 11-7, only
to have Endicott come roaring back, tying the game at 12-12. Fortunately,
Aaron Herter had the answer and immediately dodged and ripped a high shot to
put us up for good. We would tack on a couple more insurance goals to
finish up 15-12.
No offensive players played consistently great, but a few guys were effective
at times. Henry Sheehan had 4 assists while JP Coviello and Mark Foster each
had 3 goals. Dave Leach and Aaron Herter had 2 goals from the
midfield. Peter Mellen won the game ball for another stellar day facing
off, winning 23-31. In addition to dominating face offs, we dominated
most statistical categories. We outshot them approximately 65-30, won
ground balls 60-30, successfully cleared 16-19, while they only cleared
21-33. However, the score is the statistic that counts and even some of
the stats are misleading. While we outshot them, we did not shoot
well. We did dominate ground balls, but we also missed a good number of
ground ball opportunities, resulting in possessions and goals for
Endicott.
Wesleyan defeated Springfield 10-7 this evening. As you know, we defeated
them last weekend 9-5 in the NESCAC Championship game. Alex Palmisano
played great in that game, and we will need him to step up again. They
play zone all game and present some major problems to a defense, so we have our
work cut out for us. I guess that is how it is supposed to be in the
playoffs!