Comets swept by Ambush to conclude regular season

The Kansas City Comets suffered a two-game sweep against the St. Louis Ambush. Losing in St. Louis on Saturday 8-3 and at home on Sunday 6-3, KC now enters the playoffs on a season-long three-game losing streak.

Giving up 2-0 leads in both games, the Comets mixed veterans in with newly signed rookies. Player-coach Leo Gibson said those rookies have bright futures, and that showed early on Saturday.

Signing out of Central Methodist University, Junior Kazeem opened the scoring for KC this weekend with his first MASL goal in the first quarter Saturday, assisted by Lalo Alonso. Alonso assisted again, feeding Mike Da-Silva’s third goal of the season to put KC up 2-0 inside the first five minutes of Saturday’s contest.

The Ambush came storming back, scoring seven straight to make it 7-2 in the third period. A rookie out of Columbia College, Mako Makoyake opened his MASL account for KC in the third period, scoring to make it 7-3 late in the third. STL added another in the fourth to take the comfortable 8-3 win.

The next day, both sides met again on the other side of the state. Again, KC jumped out in front early with goals from Rian Marques and Lucas Sousa.

Again, the Ambush came storming from behind. This time St. Louis scored five straight to take a 5-2 lead into the final quarter. Marques’ second of the game ended the drought with 8 minutes, 15 seconds remaining in the contest before STL’s three-goal lead was restored as the visitors ran out with a 6-3 win.

The Comets outshot the Ambush in both games this weekend, combined for 69-57. Struggling for much of the last couple of months, finishing proved problematic in Sunday’s loss.

“Right now our struggle is just finding the back of the net,” Gibson said.

The Central Division champion Comets (13-9-1; 41 points) conclude the regular season fourth overall in the MASL. With all key players back healthy, the Comets are expected to field as strong a squad as they’ve had all season. The question is whether or not they can return the form they had at the beginning of the season.

“We need to get back to being able to finish our chances,” Gibson said. “To be able to stay in games and win games like we used to.”

With the regular season in the rearview mirror, the Comets will prepare for their best-of-three quarterfinal matchup with the Dallas Sidekicks. Dallas will host game one Saturday, April 9 before the Comets host game two and possibly the mini game on Tuesday, April 12.