Cazenovia 2, RFA 0
This one was a little more of a mystery for me. I walked
into this one never having seen either squad play, just having a little
knowledge about their programs in the past. Luckily, the rain held off just
enough… it came down during warmups, but turned into a drizzle by game’s start
and tapered off over the next few minutes. Standing in the rain for 2 hours
wouldn’t have been a great look. Oh well, time to talk about what I saw.
Cazenovia looked like the class of the 2 squads early,
putting a nice string together that nearly culminated in a goal over the first
couple minutes. A Henry Mann header hit the top post and bounced down right in
front of goal before the RFA keeper swarmed on it. However, RFA started to take
that away over the last 20 minutes of the first half. They rarely generated
opportunities, but they kept it on their half much more often. It looked like a
typical first game – lack of communication, inability to string passes together
and make good-looking opportunities, and some occasional bursts of ‘wow, can’t
wait to see them in 3 weeks’ attached. We went to the half all knotted up at
goose eggs. That didn’t last much longer. Kevin
Porter was on the receiving end of a nice ball forward, and he rippled the
net to start the scoring for Caz with 33:22 to go. Cazenovia started to gain
more control once the first goal was scored, with RFA only getting chances off
of a couple nice runs made by their striker throughout most of the rest of the
way. With the score remaining at 1-0 though, anything could happen. At the 9:46
mark, Porter answered the bell again, putting one through to give them the
insurance goal they wanted. RFA had the ball in their attacking 3rd
over the last couple minutes, but no attractive chances arose and the clock ran
out on the Black Knights’ day. Great for Caz, not so good for RFA. The B
beating the AA will look nice on the sectional points sheet – but the AA
dropping one to the B isn’t so impressive. Caz is now 1-0, RFA 0-1.
It was somewhat even, but Cazenovia had a little bit of
control, as shown by the MVT Rudolph stats that no one includes in the games.
Caz had a slight (12-10) edge on shots, and even though the amount of SOG were
the same, Caz obviously made better with their 4. Interesting stat: RFA had 12
goal kicks compared to Cazenovia’s 6. Doesn’t mean anything in itself, but what
it shows is that Caz was the aggressor for most of the way, and they were able
to push into the Black Knights’ attacking third more often. When you do that,
good things happen… including 2-0 wins.
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