A Washington Stealth Fan Blog
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Don’t know why I didn’t get this done over the weekend, had to work on Sunday and was at the computer all day and didn’t bust it out then. But this was one fine lacrosse game to watch.
Colorado started strong again. Another goal about 30 seconds in to the game. Cosmo wasn’t seeing the ball at all and after letting in three quick goals went to the bench for about a minute. We got a penalty and when I looked at the goal after our player went to the box Cosmo was already back in there. He managed to “reset” during his quick break and get in the game. We still finished the quarter down 5-1. Not good at all. The Mammoth have our number in the first quarter.
Luckily, no matter how fast the Mammoth start the games, the slow down. Only a little bit in the 2nd quarter while we sped up. We scored three and so did they. So they’re still up by 4 at the half, 8-4. Decent scoring with three each but nothing memorable a few days later.
The third quarter is when turned the tide of the game finally switched to the Stealth’s favor. We reeled off three goals while giving up none. My personal favorite was when we put Kyle Sorenson on the man up team for the second half and he scored one of our goals. When the rookie defender gets put on the man up team (when you’re still losing) the team is having a good time. It was a relaxed feeling for the team, even when they were down. It was great that the players were relaxed with no pressure to win (they were already in the playoffs no matter what). So being down 8-4 at the half didn’t break their will. They just came out and played their game in the third to get back in the game.
We entered the fourth down just one goal with all the momentum. Rosy went to work on the power play and tied the game up at 8. A minute later Brian Langtry ended the Mammoth drought and got their lead back 9-8. Then we finally shut the door on them with another three goal run to take the game to 11-9 with nine minutes to go. Kyle Sorenson scored the 11th goal, his second of the game on a quick reset from mid-field. All the Mammoth players were behind him coming off the bench while he waltzed in and scored the game winning goal. One more late goal by the Mammoth brought the final score 11-10. Cosmo stayed on his average of 10 goals against. Chris Levis did better than Gee Nash the night before, 11 goals instead of 12.
It got a big reaction on the forums when I said we toyed with the Mammoth in the Thursday game, but we didn’t play at full strength on Friday either and beat them. I think if Cosmo was there on Thursday we would have beaten them twice. But we don’t speculate about the past games, we work on the upcoming ones. On Friday we played multiple players who rarely get playing time or haven’t played with us at all. This included Sterling Mitchell and Jason Wiles. This was Sterling’s second (?) game of the season and the first time I’d ever seen Jason Wiles. They did their parts well. We sat out Zywicki again, which is part of the reason why Kyle ended up on man up in the second half. We also sat out Burkholder who got some more time to rest his knee. So two of our top six forwards were on the bench, which means we had less offensive output than the night before (by one goal) and the Cosmo made up the difference. This weekend we’ll bring out the whole arsenal, which will include Zywicki, who the Mammoth now haven’t seen, to up our numbers a little more.
The MVP of the series was Luke Wiles, in Zywicki out of the lineup he stepped up his game more than could be expected. 17 points in two games, 10 on Thursday and 7 on Friday. Without Wiles we would have been sunk. Whoever the Mammoth put on him on Saturday will just open up someone else. Luke was recognized with the Overall and Offensive Player of the Week awards. Congratulations to him for those awards. it’s great to see him efforts rewarded by the voters across the league.