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The men's soccer team will quickly hope to forget about the weekend that could have been.
The Lions opened up their WCC schedule at home this weekend at Sullivan Field, hosting Gonzaga on Friday and the Portland Pilots on Sunday. They opened up with a defensive lead effort against Gonzaga for a 1-0 victory, but lost a controversial game in the final 30 seconds to Portland, also a 1-0 game.
Friday's WCC opener against the Bulldogs of Gonzaga was highlighted by an LMU defense that did not allow a single shot on goal. The first half began with pressure from the LMU offense with two corner kicks in the first 10 minutes. Red shirt sophomore Jawaan Delaney made some important stops on defense to deny any opportunities that the Bulldogs tried to create.
"We have me and Bobby Burling in the center and Bo [Miller] and Garrett Maloney out on the side, and we mainly focused on playing together, and playing as compacted as possible. The more we play together the less goals that are going to be scored," Delaney said matter-of-factly.
The Lions had two great scoring chances toward the end of the first half. Both sophomore Brad Stisser and senior Diego Souza fired hard shots that forced Gonzaga's Vito Higgins to make difficult saves, preserving the 0-0 tie going into halftime.
In the second half, the Lions defense was even more dominant, keeping the ball almost entirely on the offensive side of the field. The constant pressure on the Gonzaga goal resulted in a penalty kick in the 62nd minute, the match's lone goal converted by Stisser.
"It was just a matter of time before we put one away," said Stisser in reference to the team's pressure attack. On his goal, he said, "I asked to take it, because you have to be confident when you step up to take one of those. I just stepped up and buried it."
Goalie Rob Flores recorded his second shutout of the season, and the Lions came into Sunday's game against Portland hoping to record another conference victory.
Sunday's game against Portland began with LMU firmly in control of the pace of the game. The defense was once again stifling, and the offense had a few chances led by senior David Niemeyer's always aggressive mentality. LMU ended the first half 0-0, but leading 10-3 in shots taken.
Five minutes into the second half, Portland's Bryan Irwin was ejected for his second yellow card of the game, and the Lions used their one man advantage to apply strong pressure.
However, that advantage was stripped away in the 70th minute when Stisser was red carded for being critical of the head referee. Much of the game up to that point had been marred by what the Lions and fans in attendance felt was a very poor job by the three officials.
"I will venture to say, and I don't usually say this, that might have been the worst refereed game I've ever seen. I don't normally blame referees, and I'm not blaming him. We did give up the goal at the end, but it seriously was a disappointing showing of quality refereeing," remarked Head Coach Paul Krumpe.
Portland's winning goal came with just 30 seconds remaining in the game in the form of an own goal by LMU. The Pilots crossed a free kick from the left side into the LMU box, and was accidentally misdirected past Flores for the decisive goal.
"All is not lost. We're only in the second game of twelve games. It makes our road that much tougher, but it's a tough road to begin with. We'll have to regroup and take care of business on the road next week," finished Krumpe.
