A week after Bradley’s ProRehab classic tournament win, the men’s soccer team found themselves seconds away from another victory in the team’s Missouri Valley Conference opener against Loyola.
However, the Braves suffered a crippling collapse late against the Ramblers when Loyola’s Kirill Lokhovid sent a 10-yard strike past goalkeeper Logan Ketterer with eight seconds remaining to knot the game at one apiece.
Senior midfielder Cody Lofgren, who netted the Braves’ only goal of the game, gambled with 10 seconds on the clock by challenging a header, which potentially would’ve won the game.
“Everyone was pretty much marked up,” Lofgren said. “I went to try and go head it and win the ball, and I left my man. It just happened to drop right to my man, and he tapped it in.”
The Ramblers then took the game into overtime, and in the 94th minute, Ryan Howe scored on a penalty kick after a Bradley foul on a slide tackle to win the game 2-1.
Although the Braves led the entire game, coach Jim DeRose described it as an almost even affair until late in the contest, when the Ramblers went on the offensive.
“[With] about 30 minutes left, they really just started sending everybody,” DeRose said. “There are very few times in a soccer game where 10 field players are in the box, and you only have 10 field players.”
The Braves loss drops them to 3-5 on the year, and snaps their two-game winning streak, but DeRose is confident with where his team is now.
“Our five losses came to teams in the top 100,” DeRose said. “[The players] have responded to that; they fought, and they battled. I’ve been real happy since Northridge, Marshall, Mercer and obviously Loyola.”
Following the loss to Loyola, the Braves will travel for the last time during their six game road stand to Edwardsville, to take on the cougars of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.
Edwardsville, as DeRose says, is similar to the Braves in a philosophical sense.
“They’re a little bit like us,” DeRose said. “They do the same thing we do: try to play the hardest possible schedule to either work their way to an at-large bid or preparing for the conference.”
This philosophy is one that DeRose believes makes them one of the teams to beat in the conference.
“They’re a veteran team,” DeRose said. “Talent-wise, I believe that they are one of the top two teams in the league.“
In a tough conference loaded with competitive teams, the Braves find themselves in a position they are not used to. However, despite staring down the heart of the schedule, Lofgren believes the hard work and changes the team has put forth are enough to win games.
“We haven’t been doing so well on the road,” said Lofgren. “We’re expecting to do alright and turn it around.”
