No that's not a typo, and unfortunately that's not the score after the 1st qtr or 1st half.  That's how things ended after a defensive struggle yesterday down in New London.  Thanks to all of you who made the trip up to the game, we had a strong Middlebury showing in the stands it was greatly appreciated!

Hats off to our defense who held Conn to 16 shots and only 6 on goal for the entire game.  Pete Britt ended up with 4 saves and 2 goals against in the cage. Pete also was fantastic outleting the ball and helping us go 23 for 25 clearing on the afternoon.  James Guay had his typical dominant performance on defense and on the wings of face offs but it was a total team effort defensively to hold Conn to 2 goals.  Senior John Bambrick had a terrific game by both putting the ball on the ground and with his work off ball.   Our short stick defensive middies (Frank Granara, Zack Harwood, Russ Banker, and Alex Giammarco) also all played well and did a great job in the middle of the field for us.  The other thing worth noting about the defensive effort was their first goal of the game.  I've watched it 30 times and still haven't figured out how it was a goal and bounced out of the cage the way it did.  Conn's player took a low angle shot that went off the far pipe and then looked like it hit the ground outside of the goal line and then bounced outside of the crease in front of the goal by a few feet.   The only thing I can think of is that it bounced off the pipe and then the flat piece of iron on the other side and then bounced out but can't quite tell.

Now as to how we only score 3 goals in an entire game.   Let's just say it was a combination of a number of different factors.   The first and most glaring factor would have to be our inability to finish as we ended the game with 39 shots.  Compare that to a week ago against Bates where we shot the ball 34 times and scored 14 goals.  I still feel that we have some excellent shooters on our team but this was simply not our day.  As the game went on and as we tightened up offensively we got into some bad habits by dropping the head of our sticks. 

The next factor was that their goalie made some excellent stops and finished the day with 12 saves.  The most impressive of which came in the 4th quarter after Bart Witmer caught a pass on the crease from a middie up top.  Bart turned and fired a hard overhand shot from about 8 yards to the low corner and Moran was all over it.

Conn played the entire game in a compact zone and decided not to apply any ball pressure.  The extreme example of this was that after we had been called for a 3 minute illegal stick and after we proceeded to kill close to 2 minutes of the penalty on defense we cleared the ball and even then they still sat back in a zone.  They did this for over a minute while they had a man advantage on defense!  They didn't even play the ball let alone double.

Conn's offensive strategy contributed to the low score as they decided to be very deliberate and to invert the entire game.  At one point in the second quarter they held the ball behind the cage by standing in the corner of the restraining box for over 3 minutes.  We weren't pressuring the ball and the stall warning had been issued after the first minute but they were content to let minute after minute just roll off the clock.  Finally we had our short stick recover to the crease and sent a pole out to the ball after which they turned the ball over.  We were able to successfully make this switch for the rest of the game without giving up anything to them but if we hadn't made this aggressive play on defense they would have sat on the ball the entire game.

Last but not least we were just average on man up and in transition which should be two of our strengths offensively.   We had some opportunities in both phases of the game and didn't capitalize. 

Overall I give credit to the entire team for staying tough mentally through what was difficult game to be a part of and to do enough to earn us a victory.  Not much time to dwell on this one as we have Springfield on the horizon this Wednesday down at their place.