{"id":5390,"date":"2020-01-04T22:10:33","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T03:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=5390"},"modified":"2020-01-04T22:10:47","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T03:10:47","slug":"tropics-rally-to-stun-baltimore-blast-7-6-in-overtime-to-stay-atop-masl-eastern-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2020\/01\/04\/tropics-rally-to-stun-baltimore-blast-7-6-in-overtime-to-stay-atop-masl-eastern-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Tropics rally to stun Baltimore Blast, 7-6 in overtime, to stay atop MASL Eastern Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before this season, the Florida Tropics had never won a Major\nArena Soccer League game overtime game. Now, they’ve won two this year already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Florida Tropics forward Guilherme goes up for a header near midfield as the Tropics and Baltimore Blast tangled in a Major Arena Soccer League game in Baltimore Saturday night <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ricardo Carvalho, the second leading scorer in the MASL,\nconverted a perfect wall pass from captain Victor Parreiras at the 5:34 mark of\nthe extra session to lift Florida to a 7-6 win over the Baltimore Blast\nSaturday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was a gritty effort, and reflection of exactly the type\nof team we set out to put together this past off-season,\u201d Head Coach Clay\nRoberts said. \u201cWe didn’t lose our composure and knew that if we kept battling\nthat we were still right in the ball game. What we wanted to bring to our fans\nwas a team full of winners and warriors, and tonight was a testament to that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the first time Florida (7-1) has ever beaten the Blast\n(4-5) in Baltimore, and finished off a two-game sweep of the Blast, who won the\nMASL’s last three titles before Milwaukee won last year’s championship.\nImpressively, Florida’s other OT win this year was a 5-4 road thriller over the\ndefending champion Wave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tropics rallied from an early 3-1 deficit to forge a 4-4\ntie heading to the locker room, thanks to goals from Lucas Montelares, Matt\nClare and Lucio Gonzaga.  Zach Reget\nscored in the first quarter for Florida’s other goal of the half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baltimore scored the only two goals of the third, but Reget\nblasted home his second of the night with just under six minutes gone in the\nfourth to trim the lead to one before Clare got the equalizer on a nifty header\nwith just 3:33 to play.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The game came one night after the Tropics historic 17-4 road\nwin over the Rochester (N.Y.) Lancers. Florida set team records for most goals\nand largest margin of victory in a game, and most goals in one quarter (seven\nin the fourth period) while scoring the most goals in any MASL game this\nseason.  Carvalho (three goals, two\nassists), Joey Tavernese (four goals, one assist) and Antonio Manfut (one goal\nand four assists) all had five-point games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also the first time in team history the Tropics have\nwon back-to-back road games. After winning just once on the road last season,\nFlorida is 5-0 this year away from the RP Funding Center in Lakeland. Just\neight games into the 24-game regular season, the team has already eclipsed last\nyear’s win total of six.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the quick road trip, Florida will return to Lakeland\nfor another three-game home stand starring with back-to-back Sunday matinee’s\nagainst the Orlando Seawolves on Jan. 12 and 19. Both games will start at 3:05\np.m. The St. Louis Ambush will make one of their two 2019-20 visits  to the RP Funding Center on Saturday, Jan. 25\nin a 5:05 kickoff. Tickets for all games are available at fltropics.com or by\ncalling 863-240-0101.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before this season, the Florida Tropics had never won a Major Arena Soccer League game overtime game. Now, they’ve won two this year already. Ricardo Carvalho, the second leading scorer… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[35,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-florida-tropics-sc","category-lakeland-tropics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}