This four-game road swing was certainly one to forget for the Massachusetts men’s soccer team.
Coming off an abysmal 4-13-2 mark last season, things appeared to be heading in the right direction for the Minutemen after going undefeated in their first three games at home.
However, its back to square one for UMass as a 3-1 letdown against Siena on Wednesday gives the team its third loss in the last four games.
“We just came out flat,” UMass coach Sam Koch said. “We played that poorly today.”
The Minutemen (2-3-2) look to reverse their fortunes when they finally return to the friendly confines of Rudd Field to take on Dartmouth on Saturday at 1 p.m., something Koch is especially looking forward to.
Koch sees his team’s struggles recently, Wednesday in particular, on the inconsistencies of being a young team.
“It’s just being young and inconsistent,” Koch said. “It’s frustrating because of that. We didn’t come with the intensity we needed to and weren’t focused on what we needed to.We have confidence, we’re just very young.”
Defense also appeared to be a major problem for the Minutemen on Wednesday, as the Saints (3-4) outshot them, 25-6, with 12 of them going on goal.
This made life quite difficult for goalkeeper Brian Frame, who was forced to make nine saves just to keep his team in the game.
“We allowed (Siena) to get a lot of shots on (Frame),” Koch said. “We’ve got to improve picking up guys at midfield.”
Josh Schwartz scored the lone goal for UMass in the 61st minute off a give and go with Jake Murphy that he fired off the post and into the net from 20 yards out.
The goal is Schwartz’s team-high third of the season. It is also a college career-high for the sophomore after scoring two as a freshman last year.
Schwartz’s goal could only cut the Minutemen’s deficit at the time as they had dug themselves into an early, 2-0 hole just 26 minutes, 10 seconds into the game.
It was also the only shot on net Saints goalkeeper Damian Leisemann had to face all afternoon as UMass failed to register any other shots on goal.
James Beeston got the initial goal for Siena in the 13th minute on a rebound after Nils Weedig’s attempt was blocked in front of the net. The goal was Beeston’s first of the season.
Weddig eventually got his chance to get his first tally of the season as well when his shot went by Frame in the 27th minute off an assist by Nick Theobald.
Schwartz’s strike did bring UMass back in the game, but the Saints put the contest out of reach for good in the 77th minute on Tom Allen’s second goal of the year.
Allen scored on a rebound after Theobald’s shot was saved by Frame. Theobald got his second assist of the game despite being unable to beat the senior keeper.
“I thought we played well in the second half, but we can’t play hard for only 45 minutes and expect to win,” Koch said. “It’s a 90-minute game.
“We made it difficult on ourselves,” he said. “There’s no rocket science to it. We came out flat, we didn’t have energy and we didn’t come to play.”
Nick Canelas can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @MDC_Canelas.
