0 Wittenberg 3

Off to old NCAC foe Wittenberg coached by Steve Dawson, whose tenure there trails mine by only a couple of years. The Tigers play on turf now but we have the advantage of being able to practice full field on turf down at Ross Field (EC football stadium). We learn that our turf is seriously better than that at Witt but we can't use that as an excuse.

The first half is tentative for both teams and ends 0-0. We have had an annoying habit of being unable to take a kickoff and get the ball out of our own half and in the second half we raise that to new heights and hand Witt a goal just 18 seconds after the restart. That did help to wake us up a bit and we went on a tear for about 25 minutes, playing the best we did all day, forcing a couple of decent saves from their keeper and hitting the crossbar (Xander Ansara). With perhaps their first attack of the half, Witt got wide around our left side and played a ball across to a player who got across his marker for their second goal in the 77th minute. Heads down now we conceded a third almost exactly as we did the second. Disappointing defending in front which was addressed pointedly in practice the next day.

Our season has begun to take the shape of last year's, with a long pre-conference losing streak. We look ahead to a conference opener away to Franklin who will certainly be relishing an opportunity to have a go at us after we got into the HCAC tournament last year by beating them on the last day of regular season. We will be tweaking some of our lineup in the interim to try to be more productive in attack.