Slow start dooms Mustangs vs. Benet
3 goals in 20 minutes bury DG South

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By Gary Larsen

There are some games that you just want to toss onto the season’s scrap heap and forget about.

“We didn’t come to play. It was very embarrassing in the first half, “ Downers Grove South coach Jon Stapleton said after his side’s 3-1 loss to Benet on Monday.

“It started back at school, just a lack of focus from the moment we got onto the bus. It doesn’t take anything away from what Benet did here today but I’m just really disappointed.”

Good teams take advantage of mistakes and Benet victimized the Mustangs on a pair of defensive giveaways in the first half. Benet scored three times before halftime, the third goal coming when South struggled to win a ball in the air.

Senior captain Nick Suker bemoaned the effort his side put forth through 40 minutes.

“We didn’t come out strong enough. We weren’t here today,” Suker said. “It starts with the warmup, and today was one of those days. People were joking around, messing around, and with this group of guys we should know that we can’t take any team lightly.”

The Mustangs are 9-3-4 this season and Monday marked only the third time in 16 games they gave up more than 2 goals in any game. After a 5-1 loss to rival Downers Grove North last Thursday, they bounced back with a shutout of Naperville North on Saturday.

Giving up 3 goals in a game is atypical of the Mustangs, let alone giving up 3 in a game’s first 20 minutes. Hunter Miller, Brian Morefield, and Sean O'Hara all converted for Benet (7-6-1).

“We can’t win head balls, we can’t defend, we can’t make passes. We turned it over, and while you credit (Benet) for capitalizing on our mistakes, we’re better than that,” Stapleton said.

In between Benet’s early goals, the Mustangs earned a steady stream of corner kicks – 5 in the first half and 8 for the game – but couldn’t get onto the end of one of them. It wasn’t until the second half, when Joe McLean sent in a free kick and Kyle Wolf located it the penalty area, that the Mustangs got on the board.

Downers South scored 24 goals through its first 11 games in going 8-1-2, but Monday marked the fifth consecutive game that the Mustangs only managed a single goal, and they’ve gone 1-2-2 in the process.

“We need to start scoring some goals,” Suker said. “We’ve had our bumps in the road but we’ve done well this year, and now we need to turn it around. We were on their backs for the whole second half, and we were just unfortunate to only put one away.”

While decent scoring chances were hard to locate in the second half, the Mustangs showed much more fight after intermission.

 “If we would have played with half the energy we showed in the second half, it might have been a different result,” Stapleton said. “At least we might have been in the game.”

They’re teenagers and they’ve got other things going on, but they’ve got to make sure they come ready to play.”