In their first ECAC debut, the Saints' Rocket League team fell to the Missouri Western State University Griffons this past Wednesday, 0-3. The match was streamed live on the EsportsU twitch as the ECAC feature match.
Last semester, MWSU had lost only one regular season game, and on Wednesday they showed why. The Saints Rocket League team was poised to make a good first appearance, and they looked fairly strong in the first game of the series. Despite an early goal in the first minute by MWSU, the Saints played excellent defense and prevented another score for most of the round. The Saints struggled on offense, however, and failed to score a goal of their own. A second goal from the Griffons with just 14 seconds left in the round shattered the Saints' hopes for a tie.
Round two went far worse for the Saints as they failed to score a single goal, and MWSU kept finding shot after open shot. Ultimately, the Griffins scored a total of six unanswered goals and decisively took the round.
The Saints shook off the Round Two beat down and came out swinging for the third round. They were able to find their rhythm, and John "Terx" Glover scored a goal with two and half minutes left in the round. The pressure then mounted on their defense to prevent MWSU from scoring. Unfortunately, the well practiced Griffons were able to find gaps in the Saints defense and scored not one, but two goals in quick succession in order to win the whole best of five series 0-3. Coach Lanza had this to say about the game, "There is no doubt that MWSU was a well-rehearsed team with many hours of practice under their belt. Our team had only the past two weeks to practice together as a group, and we have a long way to go, but I was seriously impressed with their effort tonight. I think individually, our players have a lot of talent that still needs to manifest itself, and I believe that will happen over the next few weeks of competition. We will easily shake off this loss, and we will bounce back for the next one!"
Saints Line Up
John Glover- Terx
Drew Maphy- KNGPhoenix
Tanner Basssette- Gubbins
