DES MOINES, Iowa – Scoreless until late in the match, Drake took advantage of a fortunate opportunity to break onto the scoreboard and followed it with the decisive second goal in the 83
rd minute in claiming a 2-0 victory over the Milwaukee men's soccer team Wednesday evening from Mediacom Stadium.
The Panthers (1-1-2) saw their unbeaten streak to open the season come to a close against the Bulldogs (3-0-2), a squad that is off to quite the start of the season of its own. Drake posted its third straight shutout on the campaign, extending a scoreless streak to 304:20 in the process.
The match started about 45 minutes later than scheduled, played as a part of a women's/men's doubleheader in which the first game was moved back due to excessive heat in the Des Moines area. Temperatures were in the 90s, with the heat index approaching triple digits all evening.
"It was a tough night to play, even with a kickoff at 8 p.m., it was still 90 degrees at the kickoff, so it's a tough environment to play 90 minutes of soccer," head coach
Kris Kelderman said. "But at the same time, that's the case for both teams – so, no excuses there. It did take a big effort on the night from both teams."
The first half developed slowly, with neither team able to put together much in the dangerous scoring chance category. Shots were 7-1 at the break, but the MKE defense allowed little to the Bulldogs, with goalkeeper
Carson Pridie solidly in place for the save on the only Drake shot on the mark. Milwaukee's lone chance was a decent look on a header off a corner kick, sent just wide.
Still 0-0 after 2/3 of the match was over,
Dominic Zuniga got the best look for the Panthers on the night – forcing a tough save in the 67
th minute. That came just ahead of the opening goal, which was helped along by a couple of failed clearance attempts off a long goal kick at the 67:08 mark.
"We didn't put together enough chances to score goals," Kelderman said. "At the same time, I thought our buildup out of the back was too slow. I didn't think we were aggressive enough in our attack from back to front on the day. Thought we were a little conservative in that fashion and let them kind of press and come at us and we kind of played right into their hands throughout the game at times."
Milwaukee pressed a bit more down the stretch looking for the equalizer, only to see the Bulldogs get a second at the 82:24 mark to secure the victory.
"I thought this wasn't one of our better performances on the night," Kelderman said. "I thought Drake was a bit better than us from start to finish. I thought we did enough to stay in the game but was disappointed in how we handled their first goal. I thought our backline didn't handle it well and kind of handed them an opportunity and they finished it … and changed the tide of the game. They got more aggressive. We got a little more desperate, and they picked up another goal as we pushed forward."
On the evening, the home side finished with advantage of 13-5 in shots and 4-1 in shots on goal, while MKE had three of the five corner kicks and did hold 54 percent of the possession on the night.
Roy Nozawa paced Milwaukee with a pair of shots, while Pridie did record two saves in his Panther debut in net.
"I just felt we needed to be more aggressive in our overall attack, and it just wasn't there tonight," Kelderman said. "Still feel like the team is in a solid place. We realize we need to get better in areas, and we feel comfortable in the fact that we know a couple areas that we can improve on a little bit. I think we're getting closer. We feel good about what we know about ourselves as a group – where we need to get a little bit better at. We look forward to rebounding and having a home game on Saturday against St. Thomas. Heads are still up for the group, and we still have expectations for ourselves moving forward."
Up next, the team returns home to host St. Thomas Saturday, set for a 1 p.m. kickoff.
