In their first home game of the regular season at the Temple Sports Complex, Temple University fell to Saint John’s University in overtime, 1-0, on Saturday night.
The Owls’ loss came in overtime off of a corner kick from St.John’s freshman midfielder Skage Simonsen, but it did not have to be that way. During the first 19 minutes, the game was at a standstill with neither team sustaining an attack. That could have changed in the 20th minute when junior midfielder Zach Brown headed in a corner kick putting the Owls ahead 1-0 but a foul on Brown immediately took the point off the board.
This changed the momentum of the game and Saint John’s controlled the rest of the first half.
“For us, a breakthrough in goal at that point would have been a nice reward,” coach Brian Rowland said. “We still kept creating chances, and we kept doing our thing.”
Once in overtime, it was clear the retracted goal from the first half affected the Owls’ mindset.
”We are creating chances it’s gonna come, it’s gonna come then we kinda got complacent a little bit,” junior forward Lukas Fernandes said. “So little things like that can’t really affect the game for us. We can’t let it get to us, but unfortunately, it did for us.”
The Owls recorded 13 shots and had plenty of opportunities throughout the night to capitalize on their chances, but they could not find the back of the net. The team fell to 2-3 on the season with the overtime loss.
If not for the goal that was called back, the Owls could have been over .500 heading into their match this coming Wednesday against Princeton University, which is 1-3.
Very nice article. Very honest and to the point.