Gators fall in double overtime to Huntley
By Gary Larsen

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Any team in the Fox Valley Conference looking for a day off had better look somewhere else.

Heading into Thursday’s games, the 7-team Valley Division had a combined record of 62-17-3, with all 7 teams featuring overall records above the .500 mark.

“It’s the best I’ve seen in my ten years here,” Huntley coach Kris Grabner said. “(CL South coach Brian Allen) and I were saying we assume two teams will share the conference with 4-2 records. If anyone gets through with a 5-1 or 6-0 record, they deserve it. There’s a lot of depth and a lot of good wins from the teams in our conference.”

Allen’s Gators squared off with Grabner’s Red Raiders on Thursday and not surprisingly, the game featured two comeback goals and two overtimes before Huntley’s Niko Mihalopolous buried a game-winning shot in Crystal Lake.

“Now we’re in a big hole,” Allen said. “4-2 (in FVC play) might still have a chance because of the parity in the conference, so now we’ll see what we’re made of. Are we going to finish the season and just kind of go through the motions, or are we going to set the tone and finish. Today, we didn’t finish. Hopefully we’ll play with pride over the last few weeks of the season.”

The Gators fell to 9-7 overall and 0-2 in Valley Division play, while Huntley improved to 10-3 overall and 1-1 in division play.

Thursday’s game pitted a solid Huntley team that features a pair of superior attacking players in the junior Mihalopoulos and senior Lucas Baker, against a CL South team that has battled far and wide with some of the best teams around but has struggled a bit in the search for consistency.

The Gators have beat a perennial state power in Neuqua Valley and showed well in going undefeated at last weekend’s Hononegah tournament. But they’ve mixed in a few rocky performances along the way.

“Once we beat Neuqua I think we hit a lull and expected things to come easy,” Gators senior Jack Carlson said. “We had a good tournament (at Hononegah) and when we play well we’re moving the ball, playing in transition, and finding our forwards. In this game we played it long and didn’t connect much.”

South junior Gary Sexson had the unenviable task of trying to slow Mihalopoulos down on Thursday. Sexson did yeoman’s work but the Huntley junior found himself with a pair of good chances and converted them both.

“We have to be able to finish games. You can put the work in but if you can’t win…” Sexson said. “Most of our problems are technical. Most teams are more technical than us so we’ve got to work our hardest in every game.”

Mihalopoulos poked a ball away from the outstretched hands of South keeper Steven Follmer early in the contest to give Huntley a 1-0 lead. The Gators answered at 23 minutes when Sam Murdock served a freekick from the left side to the far post, and Matt Tobolt was there to finish on it.

Huntley regained the lead before halftime on a Christian Ramos goal at 32 minutes, but South tied the game again when Troy Bittenbender swooped in up the left side on a counter and went far post at 56 minutes.

“I knew Murdock in the middle would be tenacious, but I didn’t expect the long ball,” Grabner said. “That’s usually not Brian’s style but I think he’s finding a way. And we were pretty sloppy in back today, which is something we’ve avoided.

“We’ve been very organized in back, our center mids have worked very hard to create layers, and today that was a big challenge. (Jakub) Rys is an absolute beast in back, but he had an average day today. He didn’t play like he normally does.”

As the second half moved forward and Sexson fought to neutralize Mihalopoulos, Baker emerged as a one-man gang.

The quick and skilled Huntley senior pressured South’s backline repeatedly, and nearly ended the game in the first overtime with a bicycle kick at the post that flew just high of the crossbar.

“I thought Lucas ((Baker) may have the best half I’ve ever seen him play,” Grabner said. “He was taking on three and four guys, consistently. I hope he finds a good (college program) because he deserves it.”

The game’s deciding goal came when Baker crossed to Mihalopoulos, who bent a shot from fair distance into the net from the left side.

“There were three or four plays in a row where it was probably a matter of time until Huntley grabbed a chance,” Allen said. “We were trying to manage the game and we decide to play back to where their speed is. We give the ball away and then we don’t account for their star players.”

“Credit Niko. He’s a hell of a player and all it takes is once chance from a player like that. We’ve been talking all year about not taking naps, and today we took five naps. Ultimately, it was going to catch up with us and we paid the price.”

Allen hopes his players find it in themselves to regroup and keep fighting for a piece of the Valley Division title, and Carlson knows what it will take.

“Communication. More communication can fix anything,” Carlson said. “We’re all talking but once we hit that lag, we stop talking. We have to work through it. We just have to keep pushing and not have our heads down.  There will be flaws and mistakes but that’s the game of soccer. Our effort was there today, we just made some mistakes.”

Grabner was particularly pleased with the day’s work put in by Aaron Koterbski, who moved from left back to the central midfield and sparked the Red Raiders’ attack. The win also stopped a three-game skid for Huntley, which lost to Dundee-Crown in its first Valley Division game.

Allen would have liked to see his side create more against the Red Raiders.

“We know they’re possession-oriented and strong in the midfield, so we knew it would be a matter of work-rate goals for us,” Allen said. “I thought we could have been better at breaking them down. We only got four shots off, and that’s not good enough. We talk about testing keepers and we weren’t technical enough. Today our technique let us down.

“I’m proud of their work rate but when you get into conference and everything is on the line, you’ve got to have more than a work rate. Today, unfortunately, we faded at the end.”

Still, a handful of Gators warranted praise despite the loss.

"I thought Sam Murdock had one of his best games in terms of getting everyone involved and letting the ball do the work and obviously Troy was tremendous for us," Allen said. "Andrew Perrine off the bench gave us huge minutes and a nice 2-way game as an outside mid on the left which I thought also gave us a bit of a much needed spark at times."