Redwings struggle throughout loss to visiting Carmel

By Eddie Burns

Benet coach Sean Wesley didn’t mince words shortly after the Redwings’ 1-0 loss against Carmel in a key East Suburban Catholic Conference matchup on Wednesday afternoon.

“That was the worst we’ve played all year,” Wesley said. “I think it was an embarrassing loss for us and not because Carmel is not a good team, but because we couldn’t do the simple things right.”

Before the season began, Wesley pegged the first six games as crucial to determining the success of the 2010 Redwings and they finished that stretch at 2-3-1.

Since then, Benet (4-4-1, 1-1 ESCC) has committed itself to fixing the little things, but it was in this specific area where the Redwings lost track of against the Corsairs.

The players agree and are just as flustered.

“It is very frustrating,” Benet midfielder Joe Menconi said. “We finally got a win and then we come in and lose this game to a team we definitely should have beat in our minds. We came out
flat thinking that we were just going to win this game by showing up.”

A great example of Benet’s frustration was evident moments into the match when Sean Mogan created a wonderful scoring opportunity. Mogan’s initial chance was turned away by Carmel goalie Ryan May, who did yield a rebound, but not one Benet player hustled to get a foot on the ball.

“That was a great chance to follow and we didn’t finish,” Menconi said.

Wesley agreed.

“We’ve been focusing on doing the little things and we’re just not,” Wesley said. “That is a situation where we need everyone crashing the net and we were caught spectating.”

Carmel (7-4, 3-0 ESCC) struck for the match’s lone goal in the 27th minute.

Phil Gross started the Corsairs’ goal when he sent a corner kick toward Benet’s far post. Carmel’s Ian Heinrich won an initial header back toward the middle where teammate Jimmy Ryan flicked the ball past Benet goalie Kyle DalSanto.

“Anytime you score off a set piece you are happy,” Carmel coach John Halloran said.

Benet came out strong in the second half and played with much more gusto similar to how it has played when behind against Naperville Central and Naperville North.

“The energy the last 20 minutes was fine, but we need that the whole game,” Menconi said. “We can’t pick and chose when we play hard – we have to go hard all of the time.”

Another area that left Wesley and the Redwings upset was at their inability to attack Carmel’s unique defensive approach, which featured six defenders.

“We played with some composure and when we did it created opportunities,” Wesley said.

“They pretty much played six defenders against our two forwards the entire game. We didn’t take advantage. We are normally a good team at taking shots from the outside, but for some reason we were reluctant today.”

Instead of shooting, the Redwings were busy passing the ball around and playing the ball deep into the corner as opposed to attacking.

“They just built a wall and we know that you have to shoot from outside, you have to open things up and get them to step out and when we did we were ineffective,” Wesley said. “We let up a soft goal and we are not the same team when we play from behind. We just don’t do a great job of creating when teams pack it in the back. You would think we would better against that, but we’re not.”

There were times when Benet picked up the tempo against Carmel, but it felt forced.

“We tried to play fast, but we played out of control,” Wesley said. “We did go hard and I’m proud of the fact that the kids, obviously, wanted to win and we felt like we were creating, but we had zero poise to go along with it and it showed. We would string one or two passes together and the third pass would go awry or we decided to attack the corners instead of attacking the goal.”

Benet did muster its best second-half scoring chance in the closing minutes when Sean O’Hara, Menconi and Mogan strung together a series of passes, but Mogan’s shot hit the crossbar.
Menconi said the Redwings need to begin to do some soul searching.

“Our mental state collectively has to change,” Menconi said. “It is easy to pass the blame, but we need to look in the mirror and be better as individuals.”