Miller Place overcame Huntington's early lead in Wednesday's Class B Suffolk championship, emerging with a 5-4 win and a spot in the Class B Long Island Championship Saturday.
Ben Kocis scored two unassisted goals in the first quarter to put No. 2-seeded Huntington up, 2-0. Fifth-seeded Miller Place would respond back, scoring once in the first quarter and then producing back-to-back goals just a minute and a half into the second quarter for a 3-2 lead.
Huntington's Chris Schoen scored unassisted to make it 3-3 with 9:37 left to play in the second. But after that, Miller Place kept the Blue Devils scoreless for the rest of the half, the entire third quarter, and all but the final three seconds of the fourth quarter. Kocis scored his third goal of the game to close the gap to 5-4, but the team ran out of time.
"We were playing too much defense. We were not winning face-offs," head coach Paul McDermott said. "Offensively, we didn’t control the ball too well when it got down to that end."
Goalie Tyler Greenhill made 12 saves, including a few close-range shots that would otherwise have been bad news for Huntington. "He kept us in the game," McDermott said.
Miller Place (14-5), a varsity team that has been in existence for just four years, will face Nassau Class B champs Garden City on Saturday at Hofstra at 2 p.m.
When the two teams met earlier this season, Huntington (15-4) took away a 7-4 victory. McDermott, whose team lost to Shoreham-Wading River in the 2011 county final, knew Wednesday's matchup would be another close game.
"I said to our guys it’s one and you’re out," McDermott said. "I didn’t think we were going to be on that end today."
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