The men’s soccer team went into Sunday looking for their first win of the 2009 season. The Tigers had other ideas. In a rematch of the 2006 NCAA second round matchup, the Stags fell to Towson 2-1.
It was the third meeting between the teams in the past three years. Last year the Stags won 1-0 at Towson, but the more important game came in the middle of one of the best seasons in Stags sports history in 2006. With a major upset of UConn in the first round, the Stags became the first Fairfield team to advance to the second round of the NCAA tournament. Towson ended the historic run with a 2-0 victory down in Baltimore.
On Sunday, the Stags were just trying to pick up their first win of the 2009 season. Both teams could not get much going early, but Towson would strike first. With 21:35 left in the first half, the Tigers received a penalty kick. The initial kick was blocked by Fairfield goalie freshman Michael O’Keefe. The saved ball, however, was chipped in by forward Liam Maloney, giving Towson the 1-0 lead.
The scored remained 1-0 at halftime. Fairfield Coach Carl Rees was concerned about the lack of energy early.
“We need to start more quickly. It’s the attention to detail early on that’s going to get us going,” Rees said.
The Tigers were the ones who started quickly in the second half. In the 48th minute, Marco Mangione and Chris Zecha assisted Maloney on his second goal of the afternoon, the first multi-goal game of the sophomore’s young career.
Rees turned to his bench for an energy boost, and he got it from sophomore Matt Ernst. Fourteen minutes after Towson took a 2-0 lead, Ernst scored his first career goal on a soft header past Tigers goalie, John Steele. He was assisted on great passes from Matthew Uy ’11 and Jon Kaufman ’11. Towson’s lead was cut in half, 2-1.
That was the closest Fairfield would get as Towson held off the Stags to preserve the one goal victory. Fairfield out-shot Towson 12-11, but only took three shots in the game’s final 28 minutes.. The loss gave Fairfield two one goal losses to start the season, including Friday’s loss to Monmouth, and dropped them to 0-2-0.
O’Keeffe had four saves for the Stags in his second career start
Although the team has lost both games so far, Rees believes the experiences from playing these tough teams early will help his young team down the road.
“That’s why we schedule these teams early on. Both teams (Monmouth and Towson) were in the National tournament last year. This is how we find out about ourselves. There were a lot of positives out there. We will be fine. We just fell on the wrong side of the fence this time.”
The Stags will need to turn to senior Christian Uy, who has 14 career goals, to pick up the slack for their low-scoring offense. Fairfield faces a tough road trip to Albany and Boston College next week, before returning home to face Harvard on September 19.
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