Bad start dooms Tigers in DVC loss to Huskies

CLICK HERE FOR PHOTO GALLERY COURTESY OF SCOTT BUTLER

By Eddie Burns

An all too familiar scene broke out for Wheaton Warrenville South coach Guy Callipari and his players.

The Tigers allowed the opposition to score first while creating a deep hole that WW South had to dig itself out of.

On Tuesday night, the Tigers failed to completely recover and it resulted in a disappointing 2-1 DuPage Valley Conference home loss to Naperville North.

The Huskies took the lead almost instantly thanks to an Evan Trychta goal in the fifth minute.

"We looked good for about four minutes and 30 seconds," Callipari said.

"I thought we could have done a better job of anticipating and getting a foot on it, but we didn't disrupt the flow and they scored at the back post."

Callipari said North's quick strike took a toll on his squad.

"Part of the issue for the rest of the half is that we lost confidence there," he said.

"We had seen this scenario unfold before where we got scored on early, played well in spurts then we play inspired and then deflated."

It is a vicious cycle and something that the Tigers need to kick.

WW South has tended to feel sorry for itself once it has fallen behind and that has played to the opposition's favor.

"That is something we've got to try and change at least in our behavior in how we act to disappointment," Callipari said.

"I thought it took us a long time to get out of that funk a little bit and consequently we let (North) have their way a little bit and they got the second goal."

North did take a 2-0 lead when Lee Grander scored off a corner kick in the 26th minute.

Callipari was impressed with North's second goal.

"It was a brilliant goal," Callipari said. "(North) set that up nicely. We allowed them to get a little bit too much separation from the mark and it was a beautiful header to the back post – what are you going to do to stop that?

"It is not like they got cheap goals. That was a great goal by them."

Alec Brazeau agreed with Callipari that the Tigers made life difficult on themselves.

"It is tough to get back into a match when you give the opposition a two-goal advantage," Brazeau said.

"They got a good scoring chance early and put it away and as a result that put us on our back foot. You could tell that goal gave them confidence and they came right at us the whole first half."

The mistakes the Tigers are making appear to be simple and easily correctable, but before they can correct them, everyone must get on the same page.

"We're all here, but some days we make stupid mistakes and give up easy stuff," Brazeau said. "We have to tie everything together.

"We just need to patch things together because our defense has ideas as do our midfielders and our forwards have ideas and we just need to connect them all. Once we do that, we'll be in good shape."

The Tigers did make adjustments at halftime and they eventually cut the lead in half with seven minutes remaining thanks to Sam Paver's first career goal.

"The ball came right off Alec's head and I was right there and put it over the goalie's head," said Paver, who has shuffled between junior varsity and varsity throughout the season.

"North is a tough team. Our morale was down when we allowed those two goals, but we gave it a good solid effort and cut their lead in half."

However, it all came too late as the Huskies did a nice job of running out the clock in the closing minutes, which prevented WW South from putting together a dangerous run.

The schedule does began to ease up for the Tigers after the Pepsi Showdown comes to an end this weekend, but Callipari said WW South's problems go deeper than practice.

"We're nine games in and some of what we need to know should have been learned," Callipari said. "I think we're making some of the same mistakes early on.

"It always seems that we've always had to come back and that weighs on you and puts a lot of pressure on our squad. It is something that we are experiencing and it is a learning curve … perhaps taking more time than most seasons."

The Tigers did lose 13 players to graduation off of last year’s sectional finalist squad that lost in penalty kicks to Neuqua Valley.