Box Score (Fond du Lac, WI) - The Sabres fell 2-1 to Concordia University-Chicago in their Northern Athletics Conference opener on Saturday afternoon. The Cougars scored the game-winner in the 67th minute to earn the victory and move Marian to 3-2 on the season and 0-1 in the NAC.
Marian out-shot the Cougars 14-7 in the contest, but could not break the Cougar defense.
The Cougars took a 1-0 lead in the 59th minute of the contest as Dan Messina found the back of the net. Marian had the answer just four minutes later as Tyler Donahue (Fond du Lac, WI) evened the game off an assist from Dustin Hendrikse (Sheboygan, WI).
Brandon Holm sent Concordia-Chicago home a winner as he scored off an assist from Andre Baker at the 67:32 mark.
Coach Peltonen's Quotes
“ A big disappointment! We came out flat thinking we'd beat this team and forgot that they wanted to win as well. We had a chance to go up 1-0 in the first half on a breakaway, but our forward doesn't put his shot on goal. Other than that we really didn't create anything dangerous in the first half.
We played a little better in the 2nd half, but again the urgency and intensity wasn't there in everyone's play. We had freshmen leading the way with the effort. Freddy Briones and Everett Zank worked extremely hard to win balls defensively and worked to get open in the attack. They were sparkplugs for us and did a great job. The problem is, freshmen should not be leading the way. It is the upperclassman that should be the standard bearers.
We did create the first two chances in the second half, one off a great feed from Kevin Mawhinney that put Kevin Schulze in on the keeper, but the keeper came up big. Then Lupe Hernandez created a chance by his hustle and getting endline, but Matt Pena put the shot right at the keeper. CUC scored on a poor clearance and a very nice shot. We counter it with a goal in the next couple of minutes on a heads up play by Kevin Schulze who took a quick corner to Dustin Hernandez who then fed the ball low across the goal. Tyler Donahue ran in to get a foot on it and direct to the far post for the goal. CUC came back a few minutes later with a nice near post run and header. Poor marking and diving in led to that goal. We played with more urgency being down 2-1, but were not able to get any real good chances to score. It would have been nice going into the Oshkosh game being 4 and 1 rather than 3-2.
We still need to figure out that the college game is played at a high pace and intensity level, as we're not doing it on a consistent basis thus far this season."
