They say it's always harder to beat a team the second time.
"Especially when they're so evenly matched," Tufts field hockey coach Tina McDavitt said. "Once you've seen them as a coach, you find things you could have done better and things that worked really well. You're modifying your game to adjust to their style and their system. It's definitely a challenge; what works to get the win the first time may not work the second time."
Apparently, nobody told Bowdoin.
In a battle between two undefeated NESCAC giants, the national No. 1 Polar Bears squared off against second-ranked Middlebury on Saturday for the first time since defeating the Panthers in the national title game last November.
And thanks to 2007 NESCAC Player of the Year and senior captain Lindsay McNamara, who scored the game's only two goals, the Polar Bears downed Middlebury in Brunswick, Maine just as they had in the national championship.
And the time before that.
And the time before that.
And the four times before that.
The game, which marked Bowdoin's 29th consecutive win and 38th straight at home, also marked the seventh straight dismantling of the Panthers, who have not defeated the Polar Bears since a 2-1 overtime contest in October of 2004 — and Bowdoin knew it.
"They know they can beat them," McDavitt said. "They know they've beaten them before, and they know they can do it again. I think it definitely gives them a mental advantage coming into those games."
The Panthers lost their conference crown after a 4-3 overtime loss to third-seeded Williams in the NESCAC title game in 2004. The following season, Bowdoin, who had suffered an early exit in 2004 at the hands of seventh-seeded Colby, jumped into the championship mix — and never looked back. Every NESCAC title since has gone the Polar Bears' way, with Middlebury falling in the finals in 2006 and 2007 before its defeat on the national stage.
Despite its recent success, Bowdoin was far from taking Saturday's date with the Panthers lightly. After analyzing their previous game, a 3-1 rout of Amherst, the Polar Bears devoted a solid block of time to studying Middlebury's play before the contest.
"Thursday and Friday, we started to focus on Middlebury just because they play such a different style," Bowdoin coach Nicola Pearson said. "They send a forward very high, so they spread out the field. They're very offensively minded, more so than any other team we'd played. We needed to go over the positioning and how we were going to play that."
The Polar Bears certainly did have cause for concern. Even after being blanked by Bowdoin, Middlebury's goals-per-game average (4.57) still sits significantly higher than the Polar Bears' 3.56. Before Saturday's game, the Panthers were outscoring their opponents at a perfect 4:1 average, making 122 shots compared with their opponents' 59.
But ultimately, it was Bowdoin's airtight defense, which surrenders approximately 0.11 goals-per-game, that prevailed.
"We knew that their corners were very good," Pearson said. "I thought we defended their corners well — I was very pleased with that. I thought our one-on-one defense throughout the field was better than it had been at the beginning of the season, and both of those factors were important."
And then there was McNamara, who padded her league-leading goal total with the pair of tallies. McNamara now has 18 goals on the season -- six more than runners-up senior Karli del Rossi of Trinity and Jumbo sophomore Tamara Brown. The Panthers have senior co-captain and goaltender Caitlin Pentifallo, who recorded seven saves, to thank that Bowdoin didn't manage more out of the 20 shots they fired compared with Middlebury's six.
"I was pleased with the amount of offense that we created," Pearson said. "To be honest, we probably should have scored a couple more goals, but in the end I was obviously happy that we won the game."
All said, Middlebury will just have to wait for its next crack at Bowdoin. While the Polar Bears will now get a break from NESCAC competition, hosting Maine-Farmington before heading to New London to face eighth-place Conn. College, for the Panthers, it's a different story. Middlebury will square off against two more undefeated teams in Trinity (8-0, 4-0 NESCAC), who they will play later today, and Tufts (9-0, 5-0 NESCAC) on Saturday.
But if history repeats itself yet again — and the Panthers are determined it will — the team should be back on track in no time.
"[Middlebury is] always a very competitive team, so I don't see them having any problem bouncing back," McDavitt said. "I think if anything, it will fire them up more to get wins over both of our teams to prove to themselves how good they really are."
