Rams edged by Mustangs as offense continues to struggle

 

CLICK HERE FOR GLENBARD EAST'S TEAM PAGE

 

By Matt Le Cren

Downers Grove South’s David Drews received a lot of congratulations from his teammates at the end of Thursday’s game at Glenbard East.

The Mustangs were quick to point out that he had his first hat trick. There was a bit of sarcasm in that because Drews didn’t technically have a hat trick.

The junior defender did score three goals, two for the Mustangs and one inadvertently for Glenbard East to account for all of the scoring in Downers South’s 2-1 victory in Lombard.

The Glenbard East goal wasn’t officially recorded as an own goal. Rather, it was awarded to Rams midfielder Ivan Surlina, who headed a free kick from Ian Leifheit toward the Mustangs’ net.

The ball grazed the head of the 6-4 Drews and bounced up in the air and over Downers South goalie Nick Tannenbaum’s head to cut the visitors’ lead to 2-1 in the 64th minute.

“[Surlina] hit the ball and it bounced off my head, too,” said Drews, who then poked a little fun at Tannenbaum. “Goalie just couldn’t save it, I guess.”

“I’m not 12 feet tall,” retorted Tannenbaum, who was standing nearby.

The jokes were flying because the Mustangs (4-4-2) had come out on top in yet another strange game in what has been an up-and-down season.

Downers South has been plagued with illness and injuries, including broken bones to four starters.

Drews is starting in place of one of those players, senior defender Andrew Donnelly, who went down with a fractured elbow.

“He’s a kid that I envisioned would be pushing for a starting position coming into the year, and with the injuries, we put him in and he’s got three goals for us,” Downers South coach Jon Stapleton said. “He’s been effective on those restarts.”

Amazingly, Drews is now the leading scorer for the Mustangs, who have scored only seven goals in their 10 matches. All three of his goals have come in the past week.

Drews’ first tally came in the 59th minute, when his height came in handy. Sam LaLonde sent a 35-yard free kick from the left wing into the Rams’ penalty area, where senior Cory Mosiman headed it forward. Drews, who had his back to the goal, used his noggin to flick it under the crossbar to give the Mustangs a 1-0 lead.

“It’s unbelievable, it’s great,” Drews said. “That header was just lucky, I guess. That’s all you need, though, one lucky touch and you get a goal.”

Five minutes later, Drews scored again and this time luck had nothing to do with it. Senior defender Joe Sombeck started this play by taking a free kick just shy of midfield.

Sombeck’s long drive found LaLonde at the top of the box and LaLonde flicked it on goal.

Drews again was parked in front of the net and he tucked a left-footed volley just past the outstretched glove of Glenbard East keeper Cody Hallcox (5 saves) and inside the right post.

“It was skill, I guess, but you’ve got to depend on that post to put it in for you,” Drews said. “It feels great, though. I don’t get that opportunity much.

"Everybody has their offs and ons and I’ve been doing good these last couple games, a few minor mess-ups, but it’s great to be in the lineup and [help] this team.”

At this point, Downers South's coach will take the offense from wherever he can find it.

“We’ve just struggled to generate consistent offense,” Stapleton said. “As I told the kids before we came over here, it’s got to start for us defensively because we’re not a team that’s going to score two or three goals a game.

"We’ve got to embrace that role and find ways to keep ourselves in games and the goals will come. That’s kind of how the formula has been for us when we win games.”

Glenbard East (2-4-3) has followed a similar formula. The Rams haven’t exactly been setting the world on fire in the attacking third, either, having tallied 11 times in nine matches.

With both sides playing solid defense, the match appeared headed for a scoreless tie, which for the Rams would have been their second straight, until the late explosion.

“It was a game of restarts for both teams,” Glenbard East coach Josh Adler said. “Every ball is going to be dangerous on a short field [about 100 yards] like this and that’s what we stress. It made for an entertaining game.

“I thought we did a good job of showing some urgency in the first half and trying to sustain the play. I thought the second half was better. It was just the restarts. You’ve always got to be ready for that second ball once the first guy gets his head on it and we got a little lackadaisical with our marking.”

But once South’s offense woke up, it didn’t take long for the Rams to get going, either.

Surlina’s goal, which was his third of the season, came just a minute after Drews’ second strike and lit a fire under the hosts, who attacked with vigor the rest of the way.

The Rams would have tied it, too, if not for the outstanding play of Tannenbaum, who made eight of his 10 saves in the second half, most of which came down the stretch.

The most amazing sequence came in the 78th minute, when a shot by Surlina hit the right post and Tannenbaum parried two rebounds from point-blank range.

Tannenbaum made a kick save on Leifheit, then somehow managed to regain his feet and use both hands to reject the rebound.

“When the first shot came in, I always go for them if they’re anywhere on net,” Tannenbaum said. “I wasn’t expecting it to hit anything but it came off the post and I was basically flat on my butt. The only thing going through my mind was the word ‘up’ over and over.

“[Assistant] Coach [Nate] Terry does a good job training me and I was able to get up and kind of get a little bit of a volleyball set out of there and then I was freaking out because it went straight to the middle. They shot it in and I was able to block it and I think it was Sam LaLonde got a final foot on it and was able to clear it.”

East had one more good chance about 15 seconds later but a hard shot by Surlina from outside the box went whizzing wide of the left post.

“It was not a good time for my heart,” Tannenbaum said. “I think I lost about 10 years.”

Despite the failure to get the tying goal, Adler was pleased with the effort.

“Their goalie made some huge saves there down the stretch to keep them in the game,” said Adler, whose club is winless (0-3-2) in its last five outings. “We did what we needed to do to try to get the game equalized. That’s what I want.

“I want us to find a way to pepper the goalie a little bit, put him under pressure and keep the ball in the attacking half of the field. I thought we did that a lot in the final 15 minutes of play, even once we got the goal.”

For both teams it now becomes a matter of doing that consistently.

After a 1-2-2 start, Downers South pulled two upsets at the Great Midwest Classic in Indianapolis last weekend, including a 1-0 win over nationally-ranked Chaminade, a perennial Missouri power, to reach the championship game of that tournament for only the second time.

But the Mustangs, who lost the final 3-0 to Avon, Indiana, followed that with a disappointing 3-0 loss at Addison Trail on Tuesday.

“I think Addison Trail was really a learning experience for us,” Tannenbaum said. “We didn’t come into the game with the right attitude, so we changed that today and obviously it ends up being enough for the win. We just wanted to come back and start winning, so it’s good to be back on a streak.”