Men’s soccer falters late in loss

By Abraham Murguia

Men’s soccer dropped its first home game in the last 10 minutes of the match after putting up a fight against the No. 17 Marquette Golden Eagles.

The game was even for the first 80 minutes, but the Eagles scored two back-to-back goals in 50 seconds, which was enough to give the Huskies their first home defeat of the season with a final score of 2-0 Saturday at the Soccer and Track & Field Complex.

“We did not play up to our standards tonight,” said senior winger Isaac Kannah. “It was hard. We weren’t able to play our game although we were doing well, but we did not finish our chances and that’s our biggest problem right now.

“The two consecutive goals felt like they were coming soon because of all the set pieces we were giving them, and that’s their strength. We knew that was their strength, we worked on it in practice on how we can prevent them to score off set pieces, but somehow they managed to score two.”

The Huskies had their fair share of chances to get on the scoreboard first, including in the 65th minute when Kannah found sophomore Chris Paton with a chance to open up the scoring. Paton tried to place a shot into the lower corner of the back post, but his effort was just wide, and the game remained scoreless.

Junior goalkeeper Andrew Glaeser made two crucial stops in the game. His first stop was in the 55th minute from a shot by Nick Parianos and his second showed his athleticism in the 59th minute as he was able to quickly react to and get a finger on a shot by Coco Navarro to tip the ball over the bar and out for a corner kick.

The Golden Eagles were eventually able to open up the scoreboard as Jack Alberts was found unmarked in the 6-yard box from a free kick 45 yards out. Alberts was able to find the ball with a header as he scored his second goal of the season.

Only 50 seconds later, Navarro doubled Marquette’s advantage as the Golden Eagles won a throw-in near the corner flag. The throw-in went inside the box and was placed back out toward Navarro, who got a shot off. With some confusion by the number of bodies in the box in front of Glaeser, the ball passed through the line for a second Marquette goal.

“Marquette is a good team,” said head coach Eric Luzzi. “They are deserving of their top 20 ranking. They don’t give away a lot, but even with that, we hit the crossbar and we had two or three other golden chances when it was still 0-0. If we put one of those away it is a different game.

“I thought on the whole there wasn’t a lot of difference in the game. We had more legit chances; they put their two … chances away. Credit to them, they are a hard team to beat and they are going to continue to win games because they are a good team.”