Despite Max Ferdinand's hat trick, the Blast were unable to come up with the victory against the Missouri Comets, losing 12-10. (Photo Courtesy of the Baltimore Blast)
There are some very handsome men in the arena tonight. I’m just sayin’.
And Beau the Soccer Cat isn’t even here! But Torrey Smith, Danny Waltman…le sigh.
As cute as Missouri Comets goalkeeper Danny Waltman is, however, he and his team were unable to defeat the Blast, who rolled to their sixth straight win to improve to 6-1 with a XX-X victory before 5,924 at 1st Mariner Arena.
Yeah, that was my lede until 30 seconds before the end of the game when Missouri put in Vahid Assadpour as a sixth attacker and midfielder John Sosa was able to whiff the ball right past Sagu’s nose to find the back of the net, resulting in a 12-10 loss, dropping them to 5-2.
The Blast’s only two losses this season have come at home — in as many games.
“We definitely wanted to do well in front of the home fans,” head coach Danny Kelly said. “We wanted to come in and show them that first game was an aberration; that wasn’t us. And I thought we started off slowly. The first seven and a half minutes we were poor. I thought after that we played pretty well. We stopped trying to force things, we got better at recognizing situations, finding the short guy. And from there I thought we managed the game pretty well.
“Midway through the fourth quarter it was little things. Not tracking guys well enough, not communicating well enough. Those little things lead to mistakes on the field. If you’ve got one guy who’s not doing what he should be doing on the field, you leave the other four guys on the field in a lurch and bad things can happen. We opened ourselves up to that.”
Missouri’s Ryan Junge got things started on a goal off an assist from Assadpour five and a half minutes into the first quarter. But the Blast answered, with Max Ferdinand scoring on a restart assist from Machel Millwood. Ferdinand scored the next goal as well in the second quarter, off a pass from Adriano Dos Santos.
Sometime between Blast fans throwing to the pro at halftime and the beginning of the second half, I fell into a red velvet-induced coma, but luckily I snapped out of it pretty quickly when rookie J.T. Noone scored off an assist from Carlos Garcia a couple minutes in. And a few minutes later, tearing down the field to make an unassisted goal, Ferdinand scored again for his first hat trick of the season.
The third quarter stayed exciting with Leo Gibson getting penalized for a hand ball halfway through the quarter. The Blast took advantage of the opportunity with Millwood scoring on the shootout. But Missouri answered with Geison (pronounced Jason) somehow squirting the ball through a wall of Blast players.
But the Blast appeared to be slipping late in the fourth quarter with Missouri’s Lucas Rodriguez scoring an unassisted goal and following it up with a pass to Cristiano 12 minutes into the quarter for a three-point goal to bring the margin to one point. And with only 30 seconds left in the game and Assadpour in as a sixth attacker, Sosa put the final nail in the coffin, despite the Blast putting in Ptah Myers as a sixth attacker.
***
As you know, I’ve been giddy all week for Torrey Smith’s appearance at tonight’s game. For a 22-year-old rookie, he was poised and gracious answering questions amidst the egregious Baltimore accents, and made some nice catches (as expected) during the “Throw to the Pro” at halftime.
Even if you’re a Blast fan and not a Ravens fan, or a Ravens fan and not a Blast fan, I think we can all agree that Baltimore has some of the best fans in all of sports. Even Torrey agrees.
“It was amazing,” he said of his first game. “Obviously I wanted to be a part of the Ravens’ organization, based on the organization itself, Ozzie Nusum, Coach Harbaugh, and the leaders they have on the team like Ray Lewis and Ed Reed. And not only that but being part of the same fan base, going to Maryland, it’s crazy. … I love going to away stadiums to see how loud they are, to see if I can hear Joe [Flacco] talking or not, whether or not we can hear him. But Ravens Stadium, it’s crazy. I think it’s the loudest stadium in the NFL.”
And how, Torrey. And how.
***
Um. Tonight they threw out burritos into the stands. Like t-shirts. But they were burritos. From Qdoba. Does anyone else feel like that’s a horrible idea? And…did any of you catch one?
***
Sunday is a very special day. You win a prize if you can guess what it is.
See you tomorrow night for the matchup against the Syracuse Silver Knights!
[...] don’t write positive ledes now until the win is in the books. And I’m happy to report that my little superstition here worked out just fine, as the Blast [...]
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