Soccer Aces Fall To Princeton, 3-0

From Coach Ed Berberich:

The MCHS Soccer Aces played their last Big 8 conference game on the road Thursday night in Princeton, losing 0-3. Princeton took the 1-0 lead in the 27th minute & added a 2nd goal with 5 minutes remaining in the first half. The score held at 0-2 until Princeton put the game away by scoring their 3rd goal with 8 minutes remaining. The Aces took 21 shots, 13 on frame. They had 7 additional scoring chances, 3 corner kicks, 19 interceptions & 2 ball recoveries. Tye Kanipe had 6 saves in goal. The Tigers took 9 shots, 7 on frame & took 5 corner kicks.

The score didn’t show it, but this was the best we’d played in at least a week. A big reason for that is we came out with more energy in our warmups than we have in a while & that carried over into the game. I was proud of the guys for this because they had some obstacles to overcome as it was our 3rd match in 4 days, we lost starting right back Brady Decker to injury in the first few minutes of the match, & this was against a good team. Despite all that though, we played hard & were more focused than we’d been lately which led to us to possessing the ball better while also putting a lot of dangerous attacks together. We gave ourselves a lot of good scoring opportunities, creating a few 1 v 1’s against the Princeton goalie & with at least 3 shots hitting the post but bouncing out. Their goalie was all-conference last year & he gave a reminder of why that was as he made several big stops for them. On our side, Tye came out & had a really good game as well. All of the goals against us were situations where Princeton had gotten behind our defense & were right on top of the goal. They had some speed up top that gave us some trouble, but generally we were more aggressive defensively than we have been lately. We were jumping out on any pass we thought we could get to, leading to 19 interceptions which
disrupted a lot of their possessions. Again, if we can keep coming out like we did in this one, we’re going to give ourselves our best chance at finishing strong, as we’re not usually going to miss as many shots as we did tonight. We have 2 more matches in this stretch of 5 in 7 days, & they’ll be against a couple of strong opponents, so we’ll have our work cut out for us, especially as we’ll be without Brady for probably both of them. Nate Critchfield & Lucas Hall really stepped up at that spot & we’ll be counting on them to continue doing so.

The Aces finish conference play with a 9 - 4 (2 - 4) record. They’ll get just 1 day of rest before hosting Vincennes Rivet Saturday morning. Rivet comes in with a 10 - 2 record & is currently ranked 7th in Indiana 1A.

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