It’s hard to blame GW men’s soccer coach George Lidster for staying in the locker room a little longer than usual during halftime of Saturday’s 3-1 loss to 23rd-ranked Loyola (Md.) at the Mount Vernon Athletic Complex on the program’s Alumni Day.
For one thing, it was unseasonably hot, with temperatures pushing a humid 90. For another, Lidster had a lot to talk about with his team. After the teams traded goals within 30 seconds of each other midway through the first half, Loyola waited just two minutes to break the tie, going into halftime up 2-1.
Then at the start of the second half, the Colonials were nowhere to be found – Loyola’s players broke their huddle and took their respective positions on the field only to find themselves unopposed. GW did not emerge from the locker room until nearly five minutes after the 15-minute break ended.
“What we were trying to adjust (at halftime) is being tighter at the back,” Lidster said. “Nobody really stood out for us. I didn’t think we played very well.”
Unfortunately for the Colonials, the extra time didn’t seem to help. The Greyhounds capitalized on another lapse by GW’s defense just two minutes into the second half.
To its credit, GW did manage to control possession throughout the rest of the second half, peppering the Loyola goal with nine shots in the final 20 minutes. But few of the shots had any real chance of going in, as the Greyhounds packed most of their players back behind the ball to maintain their two-goal lead.
“We did quite well up until the 25 yard line, but we didn’t have any ideas to break them down,” Lidster said. “A positive for us is that we didn’t give up. We were 3-1 down against a ranked team, and you’d think ‘Well, they’ll throw the towel,’ and they didn’t.”
The team can also take positives simply from having scored at all – Loyola had conceded just one goal in their past 13 matches, dating back to last season. The goal was freshman Ryan Ruffing’s first of his collegiate career. Coming only 26 seconds after Loyola’s Phil Bannister opened the scoring, the first GW attack after the restart saw junior Andy Stadler give a flick-on header in the box to Ruffing, who slotted the ball into the back of the net from the center of the penalty area.
“It’s about time,” Ruffing said of his first appearance on the Colonials score sheet, “(but) the game was really disappointing. We came in here really confident, but this was definitely not the result we wanted.”
GW (2-3-1) next plays Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Navy in Annapolis, Md.
