Pressure is on for Dogies this week

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
The Dogies were coming off of a week where they suffered two 0-10 losses against teams with speed as they set out for Buffalo last Friday to take on the Bison. Though they returned home with another loss, the squad only gave up four goals in the contest, and head coach Josh Peterson was pleased with the improvements his team had made from the previous two games.
“Obviously, losing 0-4 is not the result we wanted, but there really were a lot of positives to take from the game,” he began. “I thought we competed a lot better than we did last week, we were right there in it the whole game, our time of possession was pretty even and our chances on goal were just about even. They were just able to finish four and were unable to finish any.”
The Bison got on the board inside the first 10 minutes due to a miscommunication by the Dogies. Buffalo had been awarded a free kick, and while Newcastle was still in the process of getting organized, a Bison player took advantage of the situation and went one-on-one with Bradyn Frye, the Dogie goalkeeper.
“They have a forward who is really pretty solid, and he realized the opportunity we were giving him to score on us,” Peterson admitted. “They scored again about midway through the first half off of a bad bounce. We were in position, but had an awkward touch that they were able to take advantage of again.”
The Dogies went into the half down 0-2, and gave up two more goals throughout the second frame of play.
Like the previous week’s opponents, Buffalo had some quick players. While the Dogies struggled against the speed of Torrington and Scottsbluff, however they did a
much better job of addressing that against the Bison.
“There was better teamwork on help-side defense and we shifted toward the ball much better than we had before,” Peterson nodded. “We worked pretty hard on fixing the little things last week and that was one of them.”
Offensively, the Dogies also showed improvement, however Peterson admitted there is more work to be done.
“We moved the ball a lot better, and passed a little more quickly on offense which was good,” he began. “Obviously, we still need to make some improvements in the final third of the field, but I felt like we got the ball where we wanted it. Now we just need to figure out how to create some more quality opportunities and to get off more shots on goal.”
The Dogies have a huge week this week, as the outcome of the final regular season games have much at stake. Newcastle is tied with Douglas for fourth place right now, however in a tie-breaker situation the Bearcats will prevail. In order to qualify for the state tournament the Dogies will need to — at a minimum — push one of these three contests into overtime to earn one point and move ahead of the Bearcats.
“Hopefully we can come through and I think the boys are up to the task,” Peterson declared. “We’ve talked about what we need to talk about and we’ve worked on what we need to work on, so now it’s up to them to just do it for 80 minutes. They have shown they are capable to do so, and the competition is tough this week, but if we can play a complete game, we can hang with anyone.”
The team kicked off their week with a rematch with Buffalo at home on Tuesday, then they will travel to Torrington on Friday and host Rawlins on Saturday afternoon where the seniors will be honored before their 2 start time.