Chaminade 9 - Marquette 5

In the most enjoyable and entertaining game to date, the Chaminade Red Devils won the Rockwood Invite by defeating the Marquette Mustangs. I thanked Marquette's head coach Gregg Emde twice for such a clean and well-played game. For the first time in the tournament, there weren't any "extra-curricular" activities coming from the opposition. The game was a hard-fought, aggressive game, but played fair and clean. I can't say this enough: grabbing, holding and kicking are NOT "part of the game". This game was proof-positive that two teams can compete on a level playing field, play aggressive, not play dirty and enjoy the game more because of it. Playing dirty takes all the fun out of the game for both you and your opponent. I must again commend Gregg and all the Marquette players and we look forward to playing them again.

We knew going in that Marquette was a very explosive offensive team with sharp-shooting, speedy perimeter players and a big dominating 2M. The game plan was to have Junior Danny Faust shadow the big 2M (Tim Meyers) all game and have Senior Jack Benage and Junior Jake Entwistle guard Marquette's Chris Frimel and Kyle Catani, the aforementioned speedy sharp-shooters. As it happened, those three scored all of the Mustang goals, but not in the quantity they are used to. By leaving early for defense and slowing down the Marquette counter-attack, not to mention the fantastic goaltending by Senior Blake Stabler, the Red Devils were able to hold the explosive Marquette offense to their lowest goal output of the season.

On the offensive end, the Red Devils displayed the patience I have been desiring this entire season. Patience and creativity are staples of good offense, and finally we had the patience to match our creativity. Protecting the ball, making the easy pass and not forcing passes resulted in better shot selection and on a couple occasions we dumped the ball because the shot clock ran down. To the average spectator, running down the shot clock may seem like a bad thing, but I believe offense is something you cannot force and if a high-quality premium shot is not available, then we should protect the ball, dump it in the corner and go back to defense.

Things that went right:

• DEFENSE!
• Offensive patience
• Shot selection (except maybe a backhand from outside the goal mouth by someone who will not be named)

Things that went not so right:

• Communication - it was better, but not where it needs to be in order to beat SLUH or DeSmet

Goals: Kubik - 4, Benage - 2, Entwistle - 1, Meara - 1, Watkins - 1

Assists: Kubik - 3, Arnold - 2, Stabler - 2, Meara - 1

Steals: Faust - 4, Stabler - 3, Hoette - 2, Kubik - 2, Watkins - 2, Benage - 1, Entwistle - 1, Meara - 1

Kickouts: Watkins - 1

Saves: Stabler - 14

Player of the Game: Faust - 4 steals and tremendous defense on 2M Tim Meyers. Danny swam around when Tim was inside 5M and played behind and didn't foul when Tim was outside 5M. The biggest guy in the pool and most dangerous goal scorer was held to one goal by Danny's efforts.

Up Next: Monday, April 7th v. Lafayette @ Lafayette. JV at 4:15 PM, Varsity at 5:15 PM.