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MISL 2 Milwaukee Wave

Wave Weekly

March 1, 2006 - Major Indoor Soccer League 2 (MISL 2)
Milwaukee Wave News Release


Looking Ahead...

Milwaukee starts its longest home-stand of the season this Sunday with a visit from the California Cougars. The Cougars, who play the St. Louis Steamers on Friday night, enter this weekend with wins in three of their last five contests. The Wave has won each of the first four meetings between the teams. The last two games, both played in California, were decided by just one and two goals after the first two in Milwaukee were 9-2 and 8-2 Wave victories. After Sunday's match, the teams will meet for the Wave's final game of the season on April 9 at the Stockton Arena.

The Cougars game is the first of four consecutive games at the U.S. Cellular Arena for the Wave. Following California into town will be the Baltimore Blast, Chicago Storm and Philadelphia KiXX. All of the teams are making their final trip to Milwaukee this year. The Blast will visit on March 12 while the Storm and KiXX will be in town for a busy weekend on March 17 and 19, respectively. The Wave sports a 4-0 record against the Cougars, 3-2 against the Blast, 2-2 against the Storm and 4-1 against the KiXX. Chicago and St. Louis are the only teams in the MISL that the Wave doesn't have winning records against.

News and Notes...

Last Time Out - L, Milwaukee 6@ Philadelphia 7 OT: For one half, everything went the Wave's way as they led 3-1 after 15 minutes of play and 6-2 at the half. The second half didn't work out the way Milwaukee would have liked with the Wave going scoreless and the KiXX rallying behind All-Star defender Pat Morris for four second half goals and the overtime winner. Brett Wiesner and the Wave wasted no time in grabbing the lead. Wiesner, a Brookfield, Wis., native, scored the first two goals of his career at 2:19 and 3:41 of the first quarter; giving the Wave a 2-0 lead. Ptah Myers countered with a goal for the KiXX, but Giuliano Oliviero pushed the Wave's lead back up to two when he scored off a Greg Howes assist at 12:04 (Howes' second helper of the evening). Milwaukee remained on the attack as Howes struck for his third point of the night, a restart goal 34 seconds into the second quarter. The Wave scored two of the other three goals in the quarter as Kyt Selaidopoulos and Marcelo Fontana sandwiched goals around John Barry Nusum's score for the KiXX. Milwaukee went into the locker room with a 6-2 lead. Things got interesting in the third quarter as Philadelphia notched the only scores of the quarter. Dino Delevski and Pat Morris each found the back of the net in the third frame to make things interesting heading into the fourth quarter. Morris, the KiXX All-Star defender, came up big in the fourth quarter by scoring the only two goals of the frame (registering a natural hat-trick) to complete the Philadelphia comeback and tie the score at six. Despite a late power play chance, Milwaukee could not convert in the fourth quarter and they did not get on the board in the second half. From there, the teams headed to overtime with the Wave having a few scoring chances on the remaining power play. KiXX goalkeeper, Peter Pappas, kept Milwaukee off the board long enough for Philadelphia to pick up a power play and Pat Morris to score his fourth consecutive goal as the game-winner in overtime.

D-Fense: In the Wave's 14 wins this season, they're giving up 4.21 goals per game. In their seven losses, their goals against average jumps to 7.0, a difference of just under three goals between wins and losses. Milwaukee has yet to lose a game when they allow five goals or less. Dating back to last season (including the playoffs), the Wave has won 25 consecutive games when allowing five goals or fewer. The last time they lost when allowing five or less was February 11, 2005 at Chicago.

Schmidty Turns 150: Over the weekend the MISL's leading shot-blocker hit a career milestone when he turned away the 150th shot of his five-year career. With his two blocks against the KiXX on Saturday, Schmidt also went over the 30 block mark for the third consecutive season. The Milwaukee native is also approaching another career milestone. He has 10 goals on the year, two away from tying his career-best.

Top of the Block: Milwaukee is back on top of the league for blocks this year with 137. It's been a back and forth race with a couple of the other teams in the league, but, behind a 6.52 blocks per game average, the Wave has emerged with the lead. They're one of three teams averaging more than six blocks per contest and the only one over the 6.2 mark. Here's a breakdown of the blocks per game average of the MISL:

Team Blocks per game Total blocks Shots faced %Blocked Games played

Milwaukee 6.52 137 493 27.8% 21

Baltimore 6.14 129 523 24.7% 21

California 6.09 134 566 23.7% 22

Philadelphia 5.94 113 477 23.7% 19

St. Louis 5.90 118 377 31.3% 20

Chicago 5.04 106 446 23.8% 21

Twice as Nice: Wave first year forward/midfielder, Brett Wiesner, tallied the first goal of his career at 2:19 of the first quarter on Saturday. He came back with his second goal a little over a minute later to put Milwaukee up 2-0. The former Brookfield East star now has three points (two goals and one assist) in nine games played this season.

Ahead in Restarts: The Wave leads the league with 21 restart goals this season and has allowed the second-fewest at 11. Greg Howes has been the main sniper on restarts, registering nine of his 27 tallies on restarts. Howes' nine scores lead the league and nearly doubles the second-place player (5). Troy Dusosky and Matt Schmidt have added three restarts each - placing them in a tie for fourth place in the MISL.

Todd Hits 19: Milwaukee Wave co-captain, Todd Dusosky, has been as solid as a rock for the squad this season. He has scored at least one point in the team's last 19 games. In fact, Dusosky has multiple-point games in 15 of those contests. The last time the Anoka, Minnesota, native failed to register a point was on November 12, when Milwaukee defeated the Chicago Storm at the U.S. Cellular Arena. Dusosky started the season scoreless in the team's first two games and has gone on to score 40 points in the 18 games that followed. He has averaged about 2.2 points per game over that time.

15 in a row for #9: Although reigning, two-time, MISL MVP Greg Howes can't say that he has the longest point scoring streak on the Wave, he has registered a point in his last 15 games. Howes' last game without a point came on December 3 against the St. Louis Steamers. In that time he has 11 multiple-point games and has tallied 37 points in all. That's an average of more than 2.4 points per game.

The Big 3: Todd Dusosky (40 - 3rd), Greg Howes (48 - 1st) and Giuliano Oliviero (31 - T6th) form the league's top scoring trio with 119 points. Milwaukee is the only squad to have three players at or above 30 points on the season. All three players are in the top six in the MISL's scoring chase and they're second, third and fourth in the league in assists (Howes 21, Dusosky 20 and Oliviero 18). Their 119 points account for 46 percent of the Wave's points this season.

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