Saints Fall to Lebanon Valley College in NACE
After coming off a great win against Montgomery County Community College last week, the Saints fell to Lebanon Valley College, for the second season in a row, with an 0-2 loss.
The Saints started off strong with a two-stock lead from Henry "HennyJ" Julca. He easily defeated his opponent playing a Bowser, but LVC's second leg, playing Falco shored up the deficit for them. Alex "legmer" Holland switched in with Chrom and kept the lead against Falco by not losing a single stock of his own. LVC followed with ROB as their third leg. Even being one stock down going into the match, legmer took the first stock from ROB with ease. ROB struck back by performing a surprise up-smash out shield taking a stock from legmer. Legmer quickly took another stock from the very damaged ROB, and it seemed like the last stock was going legmer's way too. However, after trying to edge guard ROB off, legmer miscalculated his jump, and couldn't make it back to stage. Andrew "andy" Cichetti came in after that with King K. Rool. Despite putting a lot of damage on ROB early on, LVC was able to take two stocks from andy before losing his last. LVC's anchor played Yoshi and was able to combo out King K. Rool before he could do anything significant. Duncan "orchard" Stuard came in at that point with Ridley, but despite having an even stock count of three, Yoshi beat Ridley to the punch and took the first game for LVC.
In the second game, Yoshi swapped to the first position for LVC and legmer swapped in for HennyJ. Legmer defeated Yoshi with one stock remaining, but it was the ROB who ended up coming alive to take on the rest of the team single handedly. Both andy and orchard tried to swap characters to better match up against ROB, but it was no use. ROB had the right reads to end the game in favor of LVC.
Saints Line Up
Henry "HennyJ" Julca- Ness
Andrew "andy" Uceta- King K. Rool/Pyra-Mythra
Alex "Legmer" Holland- Chrom
Duncan "Orchard" Stuard- Ridley/Duck Hunt
Saints Defeated by Mizzou in NACE
On Wednesday night, the St. Lawrence Rocket League team fell to the University of Missouri Tigers 0-3. This was the Saints second appearance in the NACE Premier League. After next week's game, the Saints are switching divisions to NACE Open Plus in hopes of having better matchups going further.
The Mizzou Tigers played well against the Saints in all three rounds with early aggression to constantly put the Saints on the backfoot. All three Saints found opportunities to make it to the goal at least once, but the Tigers were able to find the net much more frequently, slipping past the defense and outscoring the Saints three times in a row.
After the loss, Coach Lanza had this to say, "This year, NACE completely restructured their league in order to put players of a certain skill level in different tiers. It seems that the Varsity Premier League consists mostly of teams that have players who are on track to go pro in Rocket League. This would be the equivalent of SLU football or basketball playing against NCAA Division I teams like Alabama or Syracuse; it's very difficult. Therefore, the team and I unanimously decided to jump down to the Open Plus division in hopes of finding a better competition. Don't get me wrong. Our team is incredibly hard working and dedicated. The improvement I have seen on this Rocket League team is tremendous, but after last night, we realized that we would be constantly punching up in every single match, and that simply isn't healthy for the growth of the team at present. I look forward to seeing what we can do in NACE Open Plus. I think we are certainly going to find our first win there very soon." The NACE Open Plus season begins this coming Monday, 9/26/22 at 7pm.
