As I sit here on the bus, on the ride back from Philadelphia, I feel like I have a little time to relax. With Veterans Day upon us and no classes for the guys tomorrow, the office should be quiet. Nonetheless, it's going to be a busy day as we are preparing to take off for the Atlantic 10 Championship in Dayton, OH.
By virtue of this weekend's wins over Temple (2-0) and St. Joe's (4-2) in the "City of Brotherly Love", we secured the #2 seed in the conference tournament. Getting one of the top two seeds is the goal we have been working for all season and after our rough start, it is quite satisfying to accomplish what we set out to do.
On Friday, we played in the afternoon - which is unusual for the A-10 weekends. But Temple does not have lights at its field, so it actually was nice to have the extra time between games. Although Temple was not doing particularly well on the season, we knew that Coach Dave McWilliams and his team were a better playing team than their record showed.
We got a very good performance out of the guys in the beginning of the first half, but Temple found some success in the middle third of the stanza. Credit goes to the boys for getting back on track and as the half was ending, we started to gain momentum.
The build up of energy paid off and manifested itself in a lightning strike to the top left corner from 25 yards out by Kedan Crosby (St. James, Trinidad) to put us on top. That confidence kept us going until Geoffrey Cameron (Attleboro, MA) knocked a through ball to Lukasz Tumicz (Bisztynek, Poland) for the insurance goal and the win.
The boys would get a good days rest on Saturday - and we knew it was much needed as Sunday's game which was going to literally be a dog fight. We were playing for the second seed and more importantly, St. Joe's was playing at home, on their senior day in a game which would put them in the Atlantic 10 tournament for the first time in 13 years. This was a huge weight for our guys to bear... especially where these games - played on the old time Astroturf on "Hawk Hill" - were traditionally physical.
The guys handled the physical play and their emotions well, netting two first-half goals by Geoffrey Cameron and Callum Bissett's (Pencaitland, Scotland) first of the year, on a corner from Danleigh Borman (Cape Town, South Africa).
We began the second half with a bit of a different line-up trying to protect a few players who were carrying yellow cards and in jeopardy of having to sit out the next game (first round of the A-10 tournament) if they received another.
The changes didn't alter things on the field as Lukasz Tumicz netted back-to-back goals to increase the lead. This gave us a cushion to be able to get some other guys some experience. In the final 20 minutes of the game, we only had 3 starters left on the field.
St. Joe's made a brief comeback with two goals off of free kicks but the experience our young players gained after that far outweighed the score of the game. I was very proud of them and think that they will grow from this time on the field.
Well, we're excited to get going to Dayton but it's not all sunshine and daisies as we leave early (6:00 am) on Wednesday. We will get a couple of days to recover and will find out after Thursday nights quarterfinal games who our opponent will be come the semifinals on Friday night.
I feel as though the team is firing on all cylinders right now, although we still have our best game in front of us. Keep us in mind this weekend as we take the field looking for that jewel that is the Atlantic 10 Tournament championship. We're looking forward to the challenge and appreciate the support everyone has shown us over the season...
GO RAMS!
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