Memphis Men’s Soccer Drops to 0-2

After a season opening loss to Lipscomb on Thursday night, the Memphis Tigers men’s soccer team celebrated Senior Night on Sunday out at the Billy Murphy Track & Soccer Stadium. Unfortunately, the celebration ended before the game began. Once the game began, it was all downhill for the Tigers.

“Evansville was the better team.” said Coach Richard Mulrooney. “Men vs. boys. Beat us in every aspect from coaching, to set plays, from tactical to technical. I wasn’t expecting it either. Like I said, even though we lost the first game I really liked how we finished it. We played 70 of 90 good minutes of soccer on Thursday night. Tonight, that wasn’t the case. Evansville came in, had a game plan and didn’t let us get going.”

The Tigers conceded the first goal for the second straight game as they fell behind in just the 7th minute tonight against the Aces. Like Thursday night against Lipscomb, they were able to get into halftime down just 1-0. They came out to start the second half and were the much better team for around 15 minutes as they had the bulk of the possession and the lion’s share of the chances. But they conceded a free kick close to their own goal and didn’t deal with the ball into the box and found themselves down 2-0. Ten minutes later, Evansville finished them off with a devastating counterattack to make it 3-0. That’s how the game would finish.

“Lot of questions to be answered.” said Mulrooney. “But in saying that, I still think there is something with this team that can get us to where we need to be. But we’re far from it and it’s going to take a gut check from all of us on the field and off the field to get there. I believe we can still get there from what I’ve seen, in spurts, but it’s hard for anybody to believe that right now when we’re sitting at 0-2.”

They may be off to a rough start, but all is not suddenly lost for the Tigers. It may just take some more time for this team to figure out how to play well together because, as Coach Mulrooney points out, there are 19 new players on the Tigers roster this season.

It’s also worth noting that the Tigers dug themselves a big hole early in conference play last season before hauling themselves out of it and into the NCAA Tournament. Coach Mulrooney believes that, despite all the new faces, there might be something to learn from last year’s team.

“Yeah, that’s a great point. It happened in the middle of the season after we’d already won some games. At some point, you always go through sort of a lull. Most teams do that I’ve played on and the ones I’ve coached. We’re just hitting it at the beginning of the year and it’s just tougher because I think that first win would take a lot of pressure off of us. But it’s not going to be given to us either. Hopefully after these two, it changes but we’ve just got to make sure we get off and get this first win next Thursday and that’s our goal.”

The Tigers next home game at the Billy Murphy Track & Soccer Stadium is Thursday against the Huskies of Northern Illinois at 7pm.