Tigers' early pressure fails them in loss to Rockford Boylan

By Gary Larsen

If all you’d seen was the first 25 minutes of Wheaton Warrenville South’s game against Rockford Boylan on Wednesday, you’d have guessed that the Tigers were bound to eventually find the net and win the game.

You’d have been dead wrong.

South (1-1-1) lost 3-0 to Boylan in second-round play of the Barrington Classic, one day after winning 3-2 over Warren in Barrington.

After withstanding a barrage of Tigers’ corner kicks, free kicks, and deep throw-ins, Boylan scored once before the half on a Steve Hall header, and then twice more after the break.

“I definitely think it’s something to work on,” Tigers senior George Doran said. “Our flick-ons aren’t really there. We’re popping it back over the back side. But also, their goalie was great. On those corner kicks he was good at punching them out.

But it’s definitely something for us to work on in terms of getting those flicks to the back post, and having people there to finish it. Because a couple of those bounced through, and that can’t happen.”

Tigers coach Guy Callipari saw his squad put 4 goals on the board in a season-opening, 4-4 tie with Hinsdale South, and score 3 times in Tuesday’s win over Warren. The Tigers were only shut out of net 3 times in 27 games last year, but graduated an awful lot of offensive production.

“When you’ve got six returners, you’re looking for guys to step in,” Callipari said. “I think we have the eleven that we think should play a majority of the time, but now we’ve got to find the guys that can support, because our starters aren’t going to be able to play at this pace, on this size of a field.

We had the better of the play for most of the first half and came away with nothing, so there are things to figure out in the final third, in terms of breaking the back four down and getting good looks at goal.”

Doran, Nate Fuster, Thomas Schubert, David Burns, and Alec Brazeau all helped apply plenty of first-half pressure in the final third, but Boylan and its flat-back system was up to the challenge.

“Flat-back four isn’t something you see all the time. Sweeper-stopper is still something you see more of in high school soccer,” Doran said. “It played a little bit tricky for us. We weren’t used to the trap being played so hard on us and we definitely got caught on it a couple times. We needed to work on getting it out wide. We were cramming it up the middle too much.”

Down a goal, the Tigers pushed hard for an equalizing goal to start the second half, but Boylan went up 2-0 in the 56th minute when Ryan Howe swept up the left side and crossed a ball that found the far post, where Mitchell Lotko buried it.

Later in the half, Howe quick-hit a free kick from 20 yards out that found the back netting. South has now given up 9 goals in 3 games – an atypical statistic for Callipari’s program.

“That’s a lot of goals. The number we have now is the total we look at for the end of a season,” Callipari said. “We might need to change things a little defensively, but we’re going to go forward. We need to present ourselves and I don’t want to put us in a defensive alignment that negates our imagination up top. We want to go with numbers and we want to try to win.”

Veteran Tigers defender Will Huesing isn’t concerned about his side’s early showing of vulnerability.

“I just think we’re not used to playing with each other. We just need time,” Huesing said. “We’re having some trouble marking in the box, and we’ve just got to pressure the ball and pick our men up, and we’ll be fine.”

Joe Holz and Michael Kania started on either side of Huesing in back for the Tigers on Wednesday, with defensive minutes also contributed by Thomas Kerby and David Schaller.

Josh Nix was solid in net through 40 minutes, tipping a shot over the crossbar late in the half, before Tim Reindeers took over between the pipes in the second half. “They’re both doing a solid job,” Huesing said.

“The work is going to come as a team,” Doran said. “We’ve got a lot of new players coming in this year and we’re not playing as a team yet. But we’ve got a lot of good individuals. Dan Burns, a junior, has stepped up huge, and Joe Holz has stepped up in back.

We just need to start playing as a team and hopefully that will come with practice.”