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Kansas City Comets at Milwaukee Wave
When: Saturday, February 8th, 2020 at 6:07 PM CT
Where: UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
How to Watch/Stream: Masl.tv/YouTube
The Kansas City Comets will enter their fourth contest with the Milwaukee Wave this season.
Looking for their second win this season over the Wave, the Comets enter Saturday’s rivalry game without the trio of Ray Saari (Energy FC of USL), Ray Lee (spent last season with Hartford Athletic, expected to sign with USL team), and Matt Lewis (on trial with Detroit City FC of the National Premier Soccer League) as well as the absence of Robert Kelly after it turned out that Kelly will miss a minimum of 6-8 weeks with a broken fibula following being on the unfortunate end of a tough challenge from Harrisburg’s Patrick Thompson on Thursday.
The 7-6 Comets enter the contest with short rest, playing 70 minutes of arena soccer in an overtime win over the Harrisburg Heat just two days before. Leo Gibson’s three assists Thursday evening has taken him to the top of the assists leaderboard in the MASL with 19 assists while his additional 22 goals puts him at 41 points, which is also the best in the MASL.
The 8-3 Wave enter Saturday’s contest with plenty of rest, coming off a 15-3 win over the Rochester Lancers two weeks ago. The Wave have won two of the previous three meetings against the Comets this season, however all three previous meetings have been intense contests with two of the games decided by one goal.
Milwaukee will be without Mario Alvarez and Josh Lemos while Guillerme Veiga and Hans Denissen are listed as questionable. This season, Ian Bennett has had some help from Alex Bradley, as both have combined for 15 goals in three games against the Comets. Bennett is once again among the league leaders with 23 goals in 11 games.
The MASL also announced Friday afternoon that they have extended the trade deadline until February 22nd, which might be something that the Comets might want to take advantage of. There are two options that seem most likely. They could sign Odaine Sinclair, who was released by the Orlando SeaWolves earlier in the week. The other option would be for the Comets to take advantage of the future considerations portion of their trade that sent Anthony Grant to the St. Louis Ambush. Leo Gibson didn’t seem too positive about getting Lucas Sousa or Ramone Palmer available, “Unpredictable. It was close one day, and then the next day, it’s like, ugh! For now, to be honest, we don’t know.”