July 11, 2023
By Shaggy Shragis
A tough Friday night for the hometown fans and an even tougher weekend for the Phoenix’s playoff chances, as the Hotbirds lost a heartbreaker to Boston, 21-20. The Phoenix are now 5-5. With Philly’s loss to Boston and their win over them the next night, DC clinched one playoff spot, and the Phoenix are a game and a half back from Boston for the third and final slot. Philly learned some tough lessons in the blisteringly hot loss Friday evening, as Boston became just the second team all season to score 21 or more points against them.
Despite the loss, it's hard to say Philadelphia played poorly. The offense posted one of its most efficient games on the season, converting on 67% of all opportunities. Even the defense continued its streak of a 50% D-line conversion rate. Calvin Trisolini was tremendous, going 59 of 60 with two goals and four assists. Greg Martin continued to make diamonds out of dirt with an extremely efficient two goals, three assists, and 100% completion rate. Paul Owens—by the numbers—excelled, with two blocks and an assist. Several players had impressive individual performances.
But ultimately, the Phoenix lost to Boston, and they did it in a way I hadn’t thought possible: coming up just short in an ultra efficient offensive clinic. The Hotbird defense generated just 8 break opportunities, and despite going 4-for-8, it wasn’t enough to overcome a 6-for-7 break performance from Boston. There were several critical missed opportunities; but as a whole the defense simply did not get enough turnovers for Philly to win a game played to this level of efficiency.
Hindsight may be 20/20, but the Phoenix desperately missed the inclusion of three of their most efficient players on the defense this season: Max Trifillis, Marc Sands, and Brandon Pastor. Of those, only Trifillis was absent from the game: Pastor and Sands were both a DNP Coach's Decision. On the one hand, it's impossible to say whether any of those players individually would have been enough to win what turned into a one point game. On the other hand, benching players that were a critical part of such a prodigious few weeks for Philadelphia seems doubly questionable after losing in the fashion Philadelphia did.
Another bugaboo rearing its ugly head from the beginning of the season: Philadelphia started the game much worse than they finished it. The Hotbirds were down 14-9 at the end of the first half, and that included a spectacular buzzer beater pulled in by CJ Colicchio as time expired in the 2nd. Philadelphia had zero breaks in the first half, and just two opportunities, one lost on a throwaway and the other on an impressive layout D from Boston’s Tyler Chan. By contrast, 5 of Boston’s 6 breaks were in the first half, resulting in a six-goal hole that Philly needed to work its way out of. At the beginning of the game, Boston’s coach, Sam Rosenthal, credited his team with excelling in adverse weather conditions such as wind or rain. With the intense heat and humidity on Friday, it appears the Glory might have beaten the elements once again.
There is some consternation with the referee crew coming out of the game. For my money, I think they missed a Boston foul on Sean Mott in the endzone that led to a Boston hold, and they called a foul on Jordan Rhyne that seemed not to have been a foul, awarding possession to Boston and giving them another hold. But these calls were on the margins of a game that, if Philly played as big as they talked leading up to it, should never have been close. For what it's worth, the Glory players probably think they were on the wrong side of some referee decisions, as they were on the receiving end of almost a dozen pick and travel calls. It is the nature of both teams and fans to attribute mistakes and miscues to someone else. In my mind, blaming the loss on the refs downplays a Phoenix team that has played well this season, and ultimately had a great game on Friday. And it short-changes a Boston squad that simply outplayed them in both meetings this year.
Philadelphia’s playoff hopes are still alive—barely—despite currently being a game and a half back from Boston and two games behind DC. If the Hotbirds can beat the Breeze and the Rush on back to back weekends, and if Boston loses to a winless Montreal Royal team at home, then Philadelphia will make the playoffs at 7-5 as the third seed over Boston at 6-6. That will require two things that haven’t happened in over a year: Philadelphia to beat DC, and Montreal to win a frisbee game. This week’s Hotbird Huck will go pretty deep on how Philadelphia could beat the Breeze, and hopefully a little bit of luck can play a factor in a second Phoenix playoff berth in two seasons. I think this team is better than last year's team, and it is a testament to the talent of the East Division that they no longer control their own destiny in the hunt for the playoffs. Go Hotbirds.
