The 4th ranked Williams College Ephs battled the
15th ranked Amherst College Lord Jeffs to a 1-1 draw on
Saturday afternoon. The top two teams in the NSCAA New
England rankings dueled for 110 minutes, with the Ephs outshooting
the Lord Jeffs 14-10.
The Lord Jeffs were able to get on the board first at the 29:01
mark of the first half when Thebe Tsatsimpe played a through ball
down the right flank to James Mooney who was able find Ian Rothkopf
on the back post for the first tally of the contest. At the
point of the goal, the Lord Jeffs had been taking it to the Ephs
with a relentless attack, "For the first twenty-two minutes
Amherst was on fire. They had some great opportunities and
were able to knock one home," said Eph Coach Mike Russo after the
contest.
Following the Amherst goal, the Eph squad was able to regain
control of the play and responded with a goal shortly after the
RothKompf tally. Williams played the ball down the right wing
to sophomore Peter
Christman, who then played the ball across the top of the
18-yard box to classmate Patrick
Ebobisse. Ebobisse collected the feed, put a nice move on the
Amherst defender and let a bending shot fly from about 22 yards
out. The beautiful shot flew past the hands of the Amherst
goalkeeper, Lennard Kovacs and into the back netting to tie the
contest at one goal apiece with 6:36 to play in the first half.
Coach Russo commented, "I was very pleased with how we responded
to the Amherst goal. It was important that we got on the
offensive and we did just that with Patrick's goal."
For the remainder of the first half, and into the second half
both teams battled tirelessly in hopes of getting the go-ahead
goal, but on this day, with the number one and number two teams in
New England dueling it out, overtime seemed inevitable.
Both teams had changes to take the lead in the second half,
but neither team capitalized on their opportunities. The clock
would eventually run down to zero and the rivals went to
overtime.
Both overtime periods were played predominately in the
midfield, with a few exceptions. Williams' Charles Romero was
able to get loose for a shot, with 2 minutes time in the first
overtime, but his blast sailed just high of the goal frame. One
minute later, Amherst went on the attack and was able to get a
quality shot off, except freshman goalkeeper Peter
Morrell came up with a big save for the as he was able to tip
the ball over the crossbar and out of play. Following
the thrilling action of the overtime periods, the final buzzer
sounded and the NESCAC and Little Three Rivals walked off the field
knotted at 1.
After the game, Coach Russo was particularly pleased with the
play of captain Joe
Vella, "Joe was able to win every ball along the back-line and
he put us in position to mount our attack." Russo was also
very happy with the play of his backline, noting that Josh
Miller-Lewis did a nice job stepping up in the first start of
his Williams career.
Morrell finished with one save for the Ephs, while Kovacs made
one save on the afternoon for the Lord Jeffs (4-0-3, 1-0-3
NESCAC). The Ephs (5-0-2, 2-0-2 NESCAC) will be back in
action next Saturday at 11 a.m. when they travel to Lewiston, Maine
to take on the Bobcats of Bate College.
