A week of scoring woes for the Knights
Prospect suffers third straight 1-0 defeat to Barrington

 

CLICK FOR PHOTO GALLERY COURTESY OF ANDY SCHNEPF

By Gary Larsen

For Prospect, a season that started at 6-0-1 has turned into a quest for goals.

The Knights scored 20 goals through their first 7 games, but have only scored 9 in their last 8 games, during which they’ve gone 3-4-1. Saturday’s 1-0 loss at Barrington was their third consecutive 1-0 loss.

“We can’t find a shot in the final third and that’s been the story all week,” Prospect coach Kurt Trenkle. “I thought we did a nice job controlling the midfield, I thought our defenders played great team defense. They were jumping in passing lanes, anticipating, and we were connecting the ball well. It’s just that final transition to a shot that we can’t seem to find.”

Richard Lenke, Patryk Ruta, Brayhan Nunez, and company played a good possession game with the wind at their backs through the game’s first half, but most of that possession took place well outside the danger zone.

“Our touch has been falling apart, we’re not making the right passes and the right runs,” Lenke said. “We have to sit down, watch some tape, and see what we need to do differently. Hopefully we can turn it around in time for the playoffs.”

Nunez found Mario Morales in front of the net for a scoring chance in the first half, but Barrington keeper Will Cotopolis turned it away. Barrington went up 1-0 on a Charlie Giovenco goal off a set piece, 8 minutes before halftime, on one of the day’s only other shots on net either way.

“I’m proud of what they did today. They worked their tails off,” Trenkle said of his side. “They just can’t connect in the final third and that’s the difference in the game. I thought they played 79 minutes and 30 seconds of good soccer – they let one ball hit the ground in the penalty box, and (Barrington) toe-poked it in.”

Lenke and Cotopolis converged on a dangerous ball out near the 18 late in the contest, but the Broncos’ keeper was able to swat it away.

The loss dropped Prospect 9-4-2, 5-4) to second place in the MSL East behind Elk Grove (10-4, 6-3), which won 5-2 over Wheeling on Saturday.

Elk Grove plays Palatine and Hoffman Estates this week, while the Knights take on Conant and Buffalo Grove in their final two MSL games of the regular season.

“The confidence is there. It’s not like we were backing down from (Barrington),” Trenkle said. “We’ll just keep plugging. We’ve got two more (MSL) games next week, so it’s still possible. And if we can’t win it maybe we can mess things up in the West.”

“We talked about getting the first goal today with the wind behind us because we haven’t lost a game when we’ve scored first. Barrington did a nice job of pressuring us as soon as we got it into the third.”

It may only take a single goal to launch the Knights back into a scoring groove, and Lenke sees another factor at play.

“We don’t have the most individually talented players in our league, but as a team, when we put it together, we can be a very good team,” Lenke said.

“I think after we won our first four or five games, and we were crushing teams 4-0, I think we might have started thinking we couldn’t lose, and no one can beat us, and that’s when people can start thinking more about themselves, individually, and I don’t think we have the talent to do that. We have to come together as a team.

We talked yesterday at the school, as a team, about what’s going on, and we had a hard practice. We just couldn’t put it together today.”