May. 11th, 2004 - Noma Shuts Out Mizzou in the 3rd, advance to Quarters.
Fenton, MO - The fifth seeded Sonoma State Seawolves shut out twelfth seeded Missouri Tigers in the third quarter of their opening round game en route to a 13 -6 victory Tuesday afternoon at the Anheuser-Busch Center in Fenton, Missouri.
The game started off with the teams trading goals and the Tigers even taking a short lived 2-1 lead. The teams settled in for a tight first half that saw the teams trade goals and play each other relatively evenly. Seawolf goalie Dominic Gomez evenly got a rare open shot, with time and space, on goal that ricocheted off the pipe.
"Luckily at Sonoma, Coach Carl is very liberal about practicing our shooting and running fast breaks. They basically locked off. I took my time and no one was coming to me. I don't think they wanted to slide to me. I don't think they expected a goalie to be able to shoot," added Gomez laughing about it after the game.
But that even play changed late in the half as Noma took a timeout and was able to pump in three late second quarter goals that opened their lead at the half to a 9-5 count.
"We got the matchups we wanted, not having seen them before it was little bit of chess game," added Sonoma Head Coach Doug Carl.
"We felt them out in the first half, and then we found what we wanted and went after it."
That late second quarter combined with the shutting out of the Tigers in the third quarter enable the Seawolves to build a lead that they carried the rest of the game, ending with a seven goal win.
The spread could have been worse if not for the brilliant play of Missouri keeper Andy Milsark who stopped ten second half shots, on his way to 14 saves for the day, many of which were of the point blank variety.
"They have a lot of guys that can really fire the ball from up top at really top speed. I tried to step high and see the ball as quickly as I could and react to it. As far as for the second half, my adrenaline was really pumping and I was all over the place," added the sophomore from St. Louis, MO (Desmet Jesuit).
Missouri Head Coach Kyle Hawkins tried to figure out what happened in the third quarter.
"We played poorly. We're young team and we weren't always mentally awake. But we can take some things away from this. One thing, it was difficult to schedule last year. No one really wanted to play a team that fringed the top twenty five. Hopefully more people will want to schedule us next year. Also it's hard to know who to schedule. If you look at our season with preseason eyes, we had a really good schedule. But a bunch of those teams fell flat and we didn't have such a strong schedule. But we only lose three seniors; the vast majority of the team is freshmen."
Sonoma State advances to the quarterfinal round and will play Arizona Wednesday at 2:00 P.M.