Game #7: 1st place, by inches (4-3 victory over D4)

Comments from team manager David E.:

I don't recall if it was 1-1 or if we were up 2-1 at half. regardless, we were up 4-1 with something like 12 min left. and, the subject of this email of course gives it away, we beat D4! we are guaranteed first place, and are 1 game away from an undefeated season.

we were missing just a few players, and they were missing their top scorer, and i think they started the game with only a couple of subs. by the end, they seemed to have plenty of players, or at least did not noticeably slow down at all down the stretch. on our side, however, i think plenty of us were tiring out (mentioned by some at half time that we were running too much and not going to be able to keep up that same level of running and chasing them).

i'll let the goal scorers and assisters describe what happened on their goals. The goals were scored by Dan (in the first 3 min), then Robert, Robert again, and Saeed with the game winning goal.

final score 4-3. In the subject line i say just "by inches" because in the final 90 seconds we had an uncalled hand ball in front of our goal, they had a shot to the upper corner that missed by about 6 inches, another shot (or two) that Kevin saved. Their most dangerous shot hit the upper left bar and rebounded across the goal (actually, probably 1/2 an inch to the right and it would have been in the net off the rebound).

there were plenty of great plays and great players today, so i don't want to single out anybody in particular, like Roberts great shot or Kevin's great saves ?

the other predictable but interesting aspect of this game was the number of 2 min penalties. i think they had 4 total and we had only 1(?) 3 of their 4 overlapped and was late in the game after we had already scored our 4 goals (with the score 4-1 or 4-2).

to save you from doing the math, at one point we were up 4 players to their 2 players (if you count goalies, it was 5 players to 3 players). we did not score during this huge opportunity, which i am chalking up as a coaching mistake, but not worth discussing unless we end up playing D4 again in the finals ... a win is a win, and this was a huge one for us. Overall, if it wasn't for the final 3 min when they almost tied the game, I would say that we outplayed them, or at least played them even and did a good job of taking advantage of opportunities created by their uncharacteristic defensive sloppy play. Our hustle and constant pressure surely played a huge role in creating these opportunities.

btw, this snaps a 4 game losing streak to D4 dating back to July! congrats all on breaking this streak, playing a great game tonight, playing great all season, and claiming 1st place finish.