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Novi makes use of possession in 2-0 triumph over South Lyon East
NOVI – The Novi Wildcats utilized their retention of the ball and found a late insurance goal to defeat the South Lyon East Cougars 2-0 on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
The Wildcats opened the scoring early when Jackson Shaw fired a cross into the box and Noah Kakish got on the end of it, turned and fired a ball into the net just 5:33 into the game to make it 1-0 Novi.
Novi proceeded to dominate the ball and territory for much of the game. Anchored by the play of Ryan Calanchi, the Wildcats were able to consistently win balls in midfield and recycle possession regularly.
“It’s not necessarily about the quantity of the time that we have the ball but the quality of what we’re doing with it. At the beginning of the season, it was like every other pass was a turnover. A lot of them were unforced turnovers,” Novi head coach Todd Pheiffer said. “That’s one thing we’ve been focused on this week is making the smart, simple pass, not trying to do too much. Let’s just keep the ball and build up the attack. I thought we did a really nice job of keeping possession, building up the attack, and creating some good scoring opportunities for ourselves.”
But after the early goal, the Cougar defense settled in and stubbornly refused to yield any more goals. Orchestrated by Nicolas Gonzalez Moller and William Gallagher, the South Lyon East back end allowed just two shots on goal the entire second half and just six shots on goal for the game as it was able to make the key interventions to keep the Wildcats off the scoreboard again until very late.
“We’ve got a strong back line, and I’ve got to give those guys a lot of credit along with our defensive midfielder back there,” Cougars assistant coach Zachary Hemker said. “We try our best to make sure they are a unit back there and they move as a unit together to help prevent some of those shots being taken, prevent a lot of opportunities on goal.”
Still, while the Cougars were good defensively, they struggled at times to get out of their own end. Eventually, they did start creating some good chances late.
“Defensively we were sound, but then we were kind of skipping lines occasionally. We needed to calm ourselves down a little bit and really possess the ball though the midfield and build our way out of the back,” Hemker said. “I thought once we got the ball moving forward a little bit there were opportunities where we started moving the ball laterally a little bit.”
Novi goalkeepers Christ Miller and Kevin Percy combined on the shutout, and the Wildcats added a late insurance goal when Calanchi played a through ball for Ivan Sazdanovski, who slotted home a shot with 5:26 remaining in the game.
With the win, Novi improves to 3-6-1 overall. The Wildcats face South Lyon on Monday in another non-league contest before hosting Howell on Tuesday in their next league match.
“We were able to get everybody in the game today, and we had a couple of key kids today out with injury that are some of our starters, so it was good see our bench guys step in,” Pheiffer said. “Once you get into the state tournament, you’re going to be counting on your bench in moments, and I think that’s another positive we got out of today that we know we can count on our bench when we need to.”
South Lyon East (3-3-3 overall) finishes its Lakes Valley Conference regular season on Tuesday when they it hosts Walled Lake Northern.
Novi and South Lyon East were both drawn into the same district and could face each other in the state tournament as well.
