On Monday, February 4th Jesuit traveled to Pleasant Grove with nothing to lose after they secured the league title the previous week. There were hard conditions this day, with bone-chilling wind and some spotty rain, so the ball did very abnormal things and launching the ball in the air was not a successful game plan to deploy. Pleasant Grove was always playing the chasing game, chasing backwards on defense as Jesuit attacked or trying to regain some ground as they possessed the ball off of a Jesuit failed attack. Jesuit was taking most of the offense, but they weren’t getting many of their iconic tic-tac plays up the field going, and they were many a time frustrated when they got close to goal, either missing a shot, getting a shot blocked, or getting stopped short by a defender. There were also many good and physical battles in the midfield, but none really worried Jesuit, as PG had practically no chances even close to goal the entire first half. Jesuit just had to struggle to score themselves, but they came up unsuccessful at half’s end.

Halftime Score – Jesuit 0, Pleasant Grove 0

The second half was on its face very similar to the first. But after the half, the teams came out a little differently. Pleasant Grove improved its attack pretty substantially and saw a lot more chances close to goal, even a few very dangerous ones. And Jesuit got a little sloppier and lazier and let off the gas pedal a bit for the first 20 minutes of the half. Then with reality starting to strike them more, the visiting team started to take mad dashes towards goal and had way more complete passing and set-up plays on the way to the goal, but they still lacked enough control of the ball and had some bad decision-making in key areas. Sometimes they couldn’t get their passes right, or before that even decide which were the right passes to make. And then often when they got pretty deep into the PG defense they would pass when they should have been shooting and shoot when they should have been passing. Pleasant Grove, going back the other way, also had some good tries at attack later in the second half. Despite  some valiant efforts sprinting up on the offense, Jesuit couldn’t squeak a goal in by the game’s end and this one ended 0-0. This lesson-teaching game completed one more step towards playoffs. Final regular season game at home against Franklin on Wednesday.

submitted by Gage Biery ‘20