Sweet Home’s boys soccer squad lost to Cascade 4-0 in their opening match at Husky Field, but Head Coach Eric Stutzer took away some positives from the contest.
“I saw a lot of improvement from last year,” he said. “One of the things we really struggled with last year was movement and making runs. So a huge improvement in our first game was our level of movement.”
Stutzer said he has a statistician who has been marking out the team’s movement in matches for almost two years now, and “this was one of the better mapped games that I’ve seen.”
“They were really utilizing the entirety of the field and moving the ball to the outside. There was a lot of crossing action, and a lot of runs being made at goal.”
Stutzer was pleased with how his team was able to put pressure on the Cougars offensively.
“A big takeaway is our pressure on goal,” he said. “We haven’t been able to produce pressure on opponents for at least two years now, and to come out in a league match like this without really much of a preseason and put pressure on their goalie and defense was marked improvement from where we’ve been at before.”
The Huskies were able to tally up 15 shots on frame.
“If a couple close shots and opportunities had went our way, it could have been a very different game,” Stutzer said.
“We didn’t warm up very well so I felt like we were a little flat coming out of the gate. In the first three minutes we gave up an opportunity to Cascade which was a little bit scary. They probably should have scored in that scenario but we were able to right the ship and turned around and put some offensive pressure on them,” said Stutzer. “For about the first 15 minutes of the game we played pretty well offensively. I think it was one of our best offensive looks in years.”
But Cascade’s Julian Lopez was giving the Huskies’ defense some trouble.
“He’s an excellent player, and he kept putting pressure on in the first part of the game,” said Stutzer.
Lopez got a breakaway opportunity 15 minutes into the game and scored a goal.
“That kind of took away some of the offensive mentality,” Stutzer said. “We kind of circled the wagons and started playing on our heels a bit more. Some of our shape disintegrated. That’s kind of how we played once we got into the second half.”
The Huskies gave up another goal quickly coming out of halftime.
“Then we held them after that,” Stutzer said. “We played a lot better defensively, and had a lot of opportunities, but we were still a little bit flat.”
“You could really see the inexperience come out after that first goal was scored. They did hang in there and they still did have quite a few opportunities. We just weren’t able to capitalize on the opportunities we had.”
He credited sophomore forward Caleb Christman played an amazing game, and was putting pressure on their defense all night long.”
Stutzer thought the Huskies’ passing left something to be desired.
“One of the things that was a little bit disappointing was our passing. It wasn’t very good most of the night. It’s definitely a skill we can improve upon,” he said.
Stutzer said his team has been working on finishing and ball control in the two practices after their opening match.
The Huskies were scheduled to play a home game against Sisters Tuesday, March 9, then host Newport on Thursday, March 11, at 7 p.m., following the girls game against the Cubs.