Conceding the first goal is never ideal, but it’s something the best teams have to learn to deal with. Starkville Academy boys soccer coach Chris Doss said as much after his team’s 2-0 loss to Lamar School on Thursday, noting that finding the ability to respond is “the test for good teams.”
As the regular season draws to a close, the Vols (6-5-1, 3-0 MAIS Division II East) will need to find what it takes to bounce back after a difficult result as well as in games. In this game in particular they showed why they’ve been successful in district play, but couldn’t find the end product necessary to get the win.
The Vols took the field in a 4-2-3-1 formation with a midfield double pivot. The double pivot sits two midfielders in front of the defensive line, with one typically going forward in possession while the other sits at the base of the attacking formation. While they weren’t able to sustain forward possession, they were able to win the ball back quickly in midfield to spring their next attacks quickly after one had failed. The pressure they applied in midfield also served to block potential counterattacks, but late in the first half one finally broke through.
Conceding just before halftime is a difficult situation to deal with. There’s not a chance to immediately respond and recover some momentum before the break, and the opposition carries that confidence into the huddle before coming out for the second half.
Doss adjusted to try and add some width to the side but took a player out of the center to do so. This change paired with an aggressive approach by the Raiders to find a second goal overwhelmed the Vols in the midfield, and just a few minutes after the restart, the deficit had doubled.
There’s an old saying that a 2-0 lead is the most dangerous lead to have, because it can lead to complacency when all it takes is one goal to completely change the game. In this case it was almost true, as the Vols gathered themselves and started taking advantage of the space left behind by the Raiders, who were pressing for more goals. In the final 20 minutes of the match, there were several opportunities for Starkville Academy to get back into the game, including a couple from set pieces, but the ball just wasn’t falling the Vols’ way. Mistimed shots, passes just too close to the goalkeeper and a defensive approach by the Raiders in the final minutes denied the Vols a lifeline goal.
Doss was proud of the way his team had started the game, but the Vols were left rueing their missed chances, and as the game got away from them, they couldn’t find their “rhythm” again.
“We had several chances,” Doss said looking back on the first half. “Nathan Miller went close, Hayden Parrish hit a beauty of a shot that went a little wide. So we were doing a lot of things right in the first half. As the game went on, we stopped doing those things so well and sort of fell out of that rhythm. We were trying to catch the game and never quite did.”
The Vols have one more game to play in district — at 5 pm Thursday at Heritage Academy — as well as a couple of non-district games to rediscover their form and get right before the playoffs.
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