Brown Past AIC in Battle at Top of Liberty
Brown Past AIC in Battle at Top of Liberty
In the meeting between the top two teams in the NCR D1 Liberty Conference, Brown encountered one of their toughest opponents, but was still able to pull out a 24-15 win.
AIC has been very good at making life difficult for their opposition and came into the game unbeaten in-conference, as did Brown. Now they slip to 5-1.
Brown Head Coach David LaFlamme was happy with the win but not thrilled with the performance.
“Our contact area was poor on attack,” said LaFlamme. “AIC did well to slow down the ruck and get into a solid defensive position. Really a game of two teams just going at it against each other.”
What Brown did was battle through the difficult moments and not get frustrated.
“Was happy to pick up a road win and impressed with the tenacity the boys showed,” added LaFlamme. “We'll analyze the performance to fix the areas we were poor in heading into Fairfield and Dartmouth. [But] really everyone stepped up when they needed to.”
Brown opened the scoring with a penalty goal from Raphael Lansonneur and a try from Antonio Esteves about midway through the first half. Lansonneur converted to make it 10-0. AIC answered with a penalty from German Rossi and, late in the half, a try from Afa Sanft to make it 10-8 at the break.
Tito Edjua turned the momentum around early in the second half with a big play, reeling off a massive run of 70 meters through a bunch of tacklers and down the sideline to extend the Brown lead to 15-8. Lansonneur then added penalty goals to put scoreboard pressure on AIC. Two kicks numdged the score to 21-8. Taivon Barker's try, converted by Rossi, closed it to 21-15 with about 10 minutes left. But Brown closed it out when a Lansonneur penalty.
Brown is now 5-0 and AIC drops to 5-1. Dartmouth is right behind them at 3-1.
