Gallery • 8 Photos

Molly Heintze

Ryan Mastowski fights off a player of the opposing team.

Dwight Morrow’s quick offense and stiff defense propelled it to a 3-0 victory over Pascack Valley in the first round of the state tournament on Monday night in Englewood.

The No. 9 seeded Indians struggled to score all night against the No. 8 seed.  Indians’ goaltender Alex Sullivan saved 15 shots, but it was not enough.

Already up 2-0, Dwight Morrow got another chance to score when Valley committed a penalty inside of the box. The Raiders capitalized, scoring shortly thereafter. There appeared to be similar illegal contact on PV’s Nick Londono, when he was pushed from the back in the crease, but there was no call.

“I thought there might have been a penalty kick that was not called,” coach Roy Nygren said. “I thought the guy ran right up his back and flattened him in the box.”

Dwight Morrow was able to hold the Indians scoreless, but PV came close to getting on the board plenty of times in the second half. There were multiple shots on goal by different players, but to no avail. Like Sullivan, Dwight Morrow goalkeeper Miguel Castro saved 15.

“I thought the second half we had many more opportunities than they had,” Nygren said. “We were just unable to beat the goalkeeper. [Castro] came up big a number of times.”

Defense was played everywhere, and there was even a series of events that saw each team get a shot on goal within less than a minute of each other:

PV senior Aidan Raleigh tried to head in a corner kick, but it sailed over the top of the net:

Oren Roznitsky had an opportunity in the middle, but Castro stopped it with a dive.

“I thought the second half we had many more opportunities than they had,” Nygren said. “But they’re a very talented team, they move the ball really well, they’re very quick.”