The Sacramento State men’s soccer team suffered a 2-0 defeat to UC Riverside on Wednesday night in Riverside.
This was the Hornets’ first loss in the Big West Conference and Riverside’s first win of the season.
The Hornets have now gone seven games without a win – their record in the Big West is 0-1-2 and their overall record on the season is 3-7-2.
It was another disappointing night for Sac State Wednesday. They were shut out for the second game in a row, which makes it 255 game minutes since the Hornets last scored a goal.
Sac State has struggled to find the back of the net as of late. Since scoring five goals against Pacific Sept. 7, the Hornets have only scored a total of five goals in seven games.
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It was a physical game between the Hornets and the Highlanders. There were a combined 31 fouls in the game, five yellow cards and one red card. Sac State led in all three of the aforementioned categories.
“They set the tone,” senior forward Austin Wehner said. “If we wanted to win that battle, we knew that we were gonna have to match that in some way. Not necessarily being dirty, but we know we needed to get stuck into tackles and work for every inch.”
In the first half, both teams committed six fouls and received two yellow cards. With both teams playing physically, there were multiple stoppages for fouls or injured players needing to receive treatment.
There wasn’t much of a steady flow to the game in the first half due to the constant stoppages and the result was a half of soccer that did not involve many goal-scoring opportunities and a poor offense in general from both teams.
A Sac State player that did stand out in the first half was freshman left-back Zac Giles. The rapid defender was making his presence known up and down the left side of the field. He was also tied for a team high for shots against Riverside with a total of two.
Despite only being a freshman, Giles has earned the coaching staff’s trust, and he has become a regular starter for the Hornets now. Giles has also played all 90 minutes in the last three games for Sac State.
“It’s amazing that [the coaching staff] have put their trust in me being so young,” Giles said. “The coaches have really helped with my development over the past year and I’m glad it’s coming to fruition and I’m getting these types of minutes.”
Giles and the rest of the Hornets had a good first half defensively, but it was a different story at the start of the second half. Just eight minutes into the second half, Riverside got on the board thanks to junior forward Luka Lukic.
While things improved for Riverside in the second half, the same can’t be said for Sac State. They once again struggled to possess the ball for long periods of play and they couldn’t create any opportunities.
With five minutes left in the game, junior right-back Jhared Willcott received his second yellow card of the game, resulting in a red card that forced him off the pitch.
In a game where the Hornets were already struggling with 11 players on the field, having to finish the game with 10 players made things much more difficult for them.
Things went from bad to worse for Sac State as just three minutes after Willcott was sent off, Riverside’s junior forward Noah Lopez scored to make it 2-0 and secured the victory for the Highlanders.
“Performance was way below what we played the two previous games so that was disappointing,” Sac State head coach Michael Linenberger said. “Some of the referee’s calls, some of the taunting from the UC Riverside fans and players. I thought we didn’t react well to it. I thought we showed a lack of maturity today and I felt that affected our game.”
The Hornets will return to southern California on Saturday to take on Cal State Northridge at 7 p.m. Northridge currently occupies last place in the Big West standings.
