It was a great day to be a
Panther down in Medford yesterday against the P. Bears.
Once again we found
ourselves in a hole early going down 3-0 in the first
quarter after a few nice goals by Bowdoin and a substitution error on our part
that allowed them to get their third.
Offensively we were pretty
balanced on the day just as we've been all year long. David Hild led us
with 3 goals while Pete Smith finished with 2 goals and 3 assists. The game ball went to senior Chris Teves who went 2,1 and has been a
solid contributor and great leader for us all year.
After rolling his ankle
against Williams last week, our trainer Kelly Cray miraculously was able to get
Matt Rayner ready to go for yesterday's game. Matt is normally a pretty disruptive defender
but he played with a little more of an edge than usual and at times was the
best player on the field. He had a huge
goal for us in the 2nd half after scooping up the ground ball off the face off
and beating his man to the hoop.
The guy who was the best
player on the field yesterday was Ryan Deane.
After giving up the first three goals of the game he really shut the
door on Bowdoin and made some pretty tough saves look easy. As Bowdoin turned up the pressure in the 4th
quarter to mount a comeback (outshooting us 14-4 in the quarter) Ryan wasn't
having any of it and continued to come up with some huge stops.
Tufts squeaked by Wesleyan
in a game they had been winning throughout until a few minutes left to play
when Wesleyan battled back and eventually took the lead. Wesleyan had a chance to put it away a few
times but you could see them tightening up as they coughed up the ball back to
Tufts. As time expired one of the
Wesleyan players did a forearm shiver/one arm takedown of a Tufts defenseman
that lead to a bench clearing brawl.
I've never seen anything like it in all of my years coaching and
playing.
We'll need to play an
inspired game from start to finish today and make some plays. It should be a great game and hope to see
many of you there! Game time is at
noon.