Mayhem looking to excel in tight games

To quote fictional basketball coach Norman Dale in “Hoosiers,” “I’ve seen you boys can shoot, but there’s more to the game than shooting!”

Strengthening play in the Macon Mayhem’s defensive zone will again be zeroed in on as the Mayhem are in the midst of a three-game swing. The stretch began with Wednesday's game at Pensacola and continues Friday at Fayetteville before the Mayhem host Knoxville on Saturday.

Macon (5-3-2 with 12 points) entered Wednesday fourth in the standings, two shy of Pensacola which was tied with Mississippi for first place. The top half of the standings currently finds itself in a logjam with the top seven teams being separated by just four points.

And Macon has thrived when the games have been high-scoring affairs, going 5-0-2 when scoring at least four goals. Low scoring games, however, have been another story with Macon going 0-3-0 when scored three goals or fewer.

“If you look at this year compared to last, I think we maybe have one to two more wins, we’re right there near the top. I like where we are in the standings and like the team we have, I just don’t like how we play in our own zone,” Mayhem head coach Kevin Kerr said. “It’s great to have offense, but we can’t expect to score 5-6 goals a game. We’re going to have games where we will have to win 3-1 and 3-2 and not take all those chances.”

Macon’s 38 goals allowed is the second highest total in the SPHL.

The Mayhem hope to improve in this area going into the weekend and are confident in their personnel in hand to be able to get the job done. Of Macon’s six defensmen, just one, Vinny Muto was not on last year’s title-winning squad.

“We have a lot of returning guys back and our style of play hasn’t changed a lot from this year to last year,” Kerr said. “We just need to take more pride on our own zone and realize if we take care of our own zone, the offense will take care of itself. We need to play better team defense.”

This story was originally published November 22, 2017 at 1:02 PM with the headline "Mayhem looking to excel in tight games."