Rochester, NY – For the second time in a week, the Rochester Lancers (3-4) fell to the Baltimore Blast (5-1) this evening in an MISL Eastern Division battle. This time, both teams played a much tighter defensive game in front of the 5973 fans that came out to the Blue Cross Arena at the Community War Memorial. The loss drops the Lancers back into a tie with the Syracuse Silver Knights for second place in the MISL’s Eastern Division.
Just like last week, the Baltimore Blast were able to open the scoring with Stephen DeRoux getting the visitors on the scoreboard just under six minutes into the match. The Lancers were then victimized by a bad bounce off of one of the officials as the clearance deflected to Baltimore’s Adriano Dos Santos who took advantage and doubled the Blast lead to 4-0. Baltimore captain Mike Lookingland was able to score off an assist from Max Ferdinand to close out the scoring in the first quarter of action.
The second quarter saw both defenses buckle down and both Baltimore’s Segu and the Lancers’ Patrick Hannigan making some big saves. Late in the quarter and with Baltimore on the power play, Gary Boughton was able to strip Ferdinand of the ball and go the length of the floor and score the first shorthanded goal in Lancers’ history to pull Rochester to within 6-2 at the halftime break.
Baltimore was able to answer back early in the third quarter when Adauto Neto was able to set Lookingland up for his second of the night. Lookingland then turned into the playmaker as he set up forward Machel Millwood for a goal. Millwood was posted up in front of the Rochester goal and was able to pull off a cheeky finish to extend the Baltimore lead to 10-2. The Lancers were able to pull two points back before the end of the third quarter when Andrew Hoxie set up Doug Miller for the tap in goal to make it 10-4 Blast after three quarters of play.
The fourth quarter saw the Lancers pressure the Blast goal. But, Segu and the Blast defense was strong and the game remained 10-4 for the majority of the quarter. With 4:40 remaining, the Lancers pulled goalkeeper Patrick Hannigan in favor of the extra attacker. But, the Lancers were unable to get one past Segu and the match ended with the Blast on the favorable end of the 10-4 scoreline.
COURTESY ROCHESTER LANCERS
