When the siren sounded for the final time this season at Shea Stadium on Friday, the Braves had hoped the scoreboard would tilt in their favor and showcase their first conference win of the season.
Instead, the scoreboard told a more somber story.
Belmont 5, Bradley 0.
In a season marred by close, but not close enough, the last thing Bradley soccer wanted was to suffer a big loss in their final home game. But when the Bruins visited town, that’s exactly what happened.
Early edge evaporates
Bradley entered Friday’s contest with a record of 2-7-6 and a conference record of 0-3-2. They hadn’t won a game since Sept. 19, with that win coming against Division III school Millikin.
Early on, it looked as though fortunes were going to change for the Braves against Belmont. Despite limited action through the first 20 minutes, Bradley appeared to be the better side and finished the first half outshooting the Bruins 11 to seven.
But in just a few moments, everything changed for the Braves.
At the 30-minute mark, Belmont’s Paul Claes Nielsen slid a perfect through ball past the defense to Brock Kiper, who fired it past Bradley keeper Drew Berry to give the Bruins the lead.
Just two minutes later, Belmont would find the net a second time as Kiper possessed a rebound and passed it to Nzuhri Biggar, who had his initial shot blocked but retook control to fire it into an open goal.
Despite some late chances from the Braves, they couldn’t find a goal to cut the lead in half, and the two sides went into the break with the Bruins up 2-0.
“We were getting shots off, we had several chances,” junior forward Mitch Coughlon said. “We just have to pretend like we’re not down and keep looking to score goals no matter what, keep going at the goalie and keep creating chances like we were doing.”
Bruins bear down
Trailing by two coming out of the locker room, Bradley pushed for a quick goal to try and gain momentum. They had a few chances to create scoring opportunities, but none of their shot attempts wound up on goal.
Then, disaster struck.
In the 57th minute, Belmont’s Lucas Wolthers retrieved a ball and turned a Braves defender to get one-on-one with Berry. Wolthers fired a shot past the keeper to put the Bruins up 3-0.
Just a minute later, Bradley defender Anel Kafedzic picked up two yellow cards in the span of ten seconds, sending the Braves down to 10 men.
“Getting a red card being down doesn’t make it easy,” Coughlon said. “After being down a man, we were still getting shots off, but it was still a tough one today.”
Ten minutes after Kafedzic’s red card, Belmont struck again as Kiper scored his second of the day. Fifteen minutes later, the Bruins scored their fifth and final goal of the game by way of a strike from Nate Mefford.
“Staying together is hard, especially giving up five goals,” Coughlon said. “Our main thing we got to do is just keep encouraging each other to play the way we play. We had more shots, we had a couple that could have gone in. Things just kind of went their way, and of course we made some mistakes, but that will happen as the final showed.”
The loss drops the Braves to 2-8-6 on the year, and they remain winless in eight games against Missouri Valley opponents. They’ll have one more chance to pick up a conference win this season on Wednesday, when they travel to Iowa to take on Drake.
“We’ve got one more game left, and we’re hoping to bring it back against Drake,” Coughlon said. “We want to win and we want to stay confident going into the game. We want to go out with a bang.”
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