The Bowling Green men’s soccer team will have to wait four more days before they have a chance to win their first game after they lost to Oakland University 3-0 on Saturday in Rochester, Mich.
The Falcons held Oakland scoreless in the first half while junior goalkeeper David DeGraff recorded four saves. Oakland took 12 shots in the first half while BG took two shots.
“I thought we played well defensively [in the first half] and that was the key to it. We were able to counter from our defense and we felt really good at halftime,” said coach Mel Mahler. “We just got in the second half and played I thought as well and again we made a few mistakes and they got a goal and it was the same old story unfortunately.”
DeGraff has made 26 saves this year and he held the Oakland offense scoreless through 53 minutes.
“Dave made about four or five great saves and on their first goal he made a save on a rebound we didn’t clear,” Mahler said. “I thought he was really keeping us in the match. We just had some miscues defensively and we can only keep so many shots out of the back of the net and I thought Dave did a great job.”
Oakland penetrated the Falcon defense in the second half to score three goals. They took 11 shots in the half and DeGraff saved three potential goals. Bowling Green improved its attack and moved downfield to take six shots in the half.
Oakland is (2-2-1) with a win against Marquette, a team that had beaten a nationally ranked St. Louis squad.
The Falcons fell to (0-6) on the season and will work on defense this week in preparation for upcoming matches.
“Right now our focus is to defend better. We’ve let in way too many goals. Today’s focus in practice and all this week in preparation for Ohio State is about not letting any goals in. We’re averaging three goals a game and unless you’re scoring four goals that’s just not good enough,” Mahler said.
Oakland’s Matt Connor scored at the 53:21 mark and at the 87:05 mark. Bret McNabb scored at the 77:54 mark.
Junior Eric Duda had three shots on goal for BG and freshman Ben Monnette and junior Paul Dhaliwal also had shots on goal.
Bowling Green will play at home on Friday against Ohio State at 2 p.m. at Cochrane Field. OSU beat Villanova last weekend and is 3-3 on the season. Bowling Green will travel to Cincinnati to play Xavier and then to Lexington, Ky. To play Kentucky, the defending MAC champions.
“We have a very tough schedule and there’s not an easy game on the schedule. We wanted to play the best, we wanted to see where we were at and this will pay off down the line,” said Mahler.
“We’ll just get after it every day and try to improve and a time will come where we’ll knock a few in and we won’t let any in and that will be the momentum we need to go from there.”
