The Plymouth State men’s team played University of Massachusetts Dartmouth this past Saturday.
The team was coming off a win earlier in the week and was looking to pick up another. Unfortunately for Plymouth, Dartmouth had come to play hard and the game ended in another double overtime draw. This marks the third double of the season and the team advances to 2-2-2. On paper, Plymouth seemed to be the favored before the game as Dartmouth came into the game with four straight losses. Only to increase Plymouth’s advantage before the game was the fact historically Plymouth has had a commanding presence in the matches these two teams have played as the record was 18-7-1.
Once the game started Plymouth took the driver’s seat as the team just seemed to be able to do whatever they wanted. Dartmouth looked as though they could nothing to stop Plymouth’s offense as they shot the ball seven times in the first period, with freshman Alyosha Westbrook’s (Los Angeles CA) shot coming the closest unfortunately be rejected at the last second. Including the shots, Plymouth had six corner kicks in the first period. In addition to the offense getting into a groove early our goalie Linus Lindeberg (Stockholm Sweden) was able to stop two would be goals with ease.
The second half saw our offense slow down with four shots. Though, Dartmouth came out of halftime on a mission with seven shots. The highlight of the second half came from Lindeberg as he made two saves in a matter of five seconds. The second half concluded as quickly as it started, and the game was sent to overtime. Overtime saw Juan Rivera (Mt. Kisco NY) and Westbrook try and come up with game changers, unfortunately, nothing came to fruition as Rivera’s header was blocked and Westbrooks shot was stopped again. There the gameended with a final score of 0- 0, with both teams walking away with a point. The high note of the game came in the form of Lindeberg securing his second shutout of his young collegiate career.
A man we didn’t see on the stat sheet is Dan Shaw. Shaw is a defender and his primary goal is to keep the ball out of Plymouth’s third of the field. I’d say Shaw and the rest of the defenders did a pretty good job of that in this game. After the game Shaw had this to say about the team reaching another double overtime and the overall mood of the team, “The teams mood is high, we go into each game with the confidence that we will win. We are learning that we need to take our chances when they come throughout the game… as if we don’t we will end up going all the way to double over time again.” As for learning from each game Shaw also shared with some personal goals, “Personally, as a defender I want to keep as many clean sheets as possible. I set a goal at the start of the season… We got our first one last Saturday, so, hope-fully we can build on that and get a few more in conference of over the course of the season.” As well as some team goals, “I as well as the rest of the team’s goals is to get top 2 andget a straight to the LEC semifinals. Failing this, as a team we expect top 4 each season, we fell short of this mark last year and were bitterly disappointed. Then once we are in playoffs anything can happen.”
The team kicks off a road trip starting this Saturday September 22, at Southern Maine University. The game is set for 1 p.m.