Playing a man down for the last 16 minutes of regulation against the No. 8 team in the country, Westmont couldn’t hold off Oklahoma Baptist and suffered a 2-1 season-opening men’s soccer loss Thursday at the Azusa Pacific Cougar Classic.
Victor Costa scored the game-winner with just under six minutes to play, getting into the box and launching a ball from 8 yards.
It was a hard loss for the Warriors, who played well and led 1-0 until the 65th minute.
“The disappointment is in letting one slip away against a ranked team,” said Westmont coach Wolf. “Those are the kinds of games that can get you back into the picture as a program. We missed a big opportunity to do that today.”
The score was tied at 1-1 when the Warriors suffered a big blow.
With 16:27 remaining in regulation, senior forward Doug Harrell was issued a second yellow card and was ejected from the game.
“That was a big disappointment,” acknowledge Wolf. “Five minutes apart, Doug puts himself in a couple of bad situations. Now we are facing an uphill battle. It put us in a really bad spot.
“We had to defend a lot more after the ejection,” he explained. “I would say that up until the red card, we were more in control of the game than our opponent. Once that happened, it was just a matter of whether we could hold on for a time or whether they were going to get another one. And they did.”
Sophomore midfielder Sean Siemens helped the Warriors get off on the right foot when he buried the ball in the back of the net in the game’s 21st minute.
Siemens entered the game in the 12th minute when starting midfielder Ben Gordon was forced to leave the game after injuring his leg.
“My guess is that he is probably going to be out for a while. They will do a re-evaluation on him tomorrow,” said Wolf.
Nine minutes later, Siemens headed the ball into the net off a corner kick from fellow sophomore Nana Akyen.
“Good delivery by Nana, good run by Sean. It was Sean’s first college goal so a real nice moment for him,” said Wolf.
The Warriors made the 1-0 lead hold up throughout the rest of the half.
“We moved the ball pretty well on a few occasions,” said Wolf. “We got a chance to do some things going forward that we didn’t get a chance to do in the UCSB game. I thought we also defended pretty solidly. Our back four was very good and Matt (McNab) was reading situations very well in the goal. He didn’t have to make any saves in the first half of any real danger, but he did a nice job of managing the goal area.
The Warrior’s solid play continued into the start of the second half.
Twenty minutes into the second half, however, Costa tied the score for Oklahoma Baptist on an unassisted goal from 20 yards out.
“The goal came out of nowhere,” reported Wolf. “We turned a bad ball over in the midfield and (Costa) caught Matt out (of the goal). To be fair to Matt, it was a ball we should not have turned over. (Costa) put one in the top corner and there was nothing Matt could do.”
Westmont will return to Azusa on Saturday to take on Grand Canyon (Ariz.). The Antelopes, ranked No. 11 in NCAA Division II, defeated No.12 Azusa Pacific by a score of 2-1.
