With 3.8 seconds remaining in regulation, Oswego forward Alex Botten was being pulled back from SUNY Fredonia goalie Eric Bogart after Botten’s helmet was knocked off. After a brief scuffle and a few whistles, the remaining time expired and the two teams headed to overtime.
40 seconds later in overtime, Botten got his revenge back as he pushed the puck past Bogart to give his team its first overtime victory of the season and a third straight win for Oswego State.
“It was just a great pass from Galati to Hulshof and then Hulsh to me in front,” Botten said. “I just put my head down and started banging away at it and fortunate for me, it went in.”
The Lakers won 3-2 to improve their record to 6-4-1 on the season.
With the win, the first home overtime victory for the Lakers since 2002, Oswego now sits tied for second place in the SUNYAC standings as No. 1 SUNY Plattsburgh fell to No. 14 SUNY Geneseo Saturday night by a score of 5-4.
“That’s great news,” Botten said. “Hopefully they continue to have a little bit of a slump and we can capitalize on it.”
While the Lakers won, it was far from a great performance as Oswego nearly came out of the game without a victory against Fredonia, a team they’ve historically dominated.
“To have to squeak it out in overtime, we’ll take it,” Oswego head coach Ed Gosek said. “But it’s been a struggle to score. I don’t think we moved our feet as well as last night and we were a little tentative again. We had a lot of good opportunities; it’s a broken record.”
Gosek said he was trying to do his best to have the team emulate Friday night’s success against Buffalo State, when they had over 50 shots on net and buried four goals in their victory.
“Last night’s mentality we tried to carry into tonight of just getting pucks to the net and not trying to shoot to score as much as trying to shoot to create second-chance opportunities,” Gosek said.
The biggest issue for the Lakers tonight was the power play unit, which after scoring a power play goal in four straight games heading into the weekend, got only one goal tonight on five chances, with the one being Botten’s goal.
“I thought the puck movement was good, we just didn’t finish,” Gosek said. “Any time that you can get over two quality shots on the power play, that’s going to be good. I thought we controlled a majority of the game, possession-wise.”
Gosek remains optimistic about the season going forward and his team’s ability to bounce back after a very rough start. With Plattsburgh finishing the weekend with a tie and loss against the College at Brockport and Geneseo, respectively, the Lakers have seen their team to climb back up in the rankings.
“It’s wide open,” Gosek said on the state of the SUNYAC conference. “Tonight was a huge two points and now we move forward and gain some much needed confidence. The bottom line is, these games earlier in the year didn’t go our way. Tonight, the bounce goes our way.”
“We were battling all night and pucks weren’t going our way,” Botten said. “We weren’t getting too many calls. Our team has faced a little adversity this season and it’s nice to come out with the win. We’ve got to keep moving forward from here.”
The Lakers will now look forward to getting some rest and preparing for The Pathfinder Classic Tournament at the beginning of 2016, which they will host in Oswego.
They will play Castleton State College the first night and if they win, will face off against the winner of Adrian College and Williams College, both of whom are nationally ranked.
