By Rachel Essa
Louisville’s men’s soccer team left Lynn Stadium with a disappointing draw against unranked Cornell on Friday night, bringing their overall record to 1-0-1.
The Cardinals performed much better than Cornell on the offensive side, taking 18 shots compared to Cornell’s six. Louisville also created six corner kicks compared to Cornell’s four. Even though the Cardinals dominated control of the ball, they were still unable to score a goal in 90 minutes of play plus 20 minutes of overtime.
Two saves were made by the Cardinal’s senior goalkeeper Joachim Ball. Louisville’s defense was on point which allowed them to continue to keep the opposition from scoring a goal scored this season. However, Cornell also kept a tight defensive strategy, with goalkeeper Zach Zagorski making four saves.
“I just don’t think we as a team did enough going forward to create enough chances and opportunities to score tonight,” Louisville head coach Ken Lolla said. “Again, I give credit to Cornell, but I think a big part of that was us.”
Despite the big opening night win against Maryland the draw against Cornell brought the Cards ego’s down.
“The effort tonight showed us that we are still lacking some maturity of how we played the game, of how we went about the game. I think that we simply have a lot of growth [to come]. The good news is that we’ve seen a lot of games like that, going in a direction where you don’t get a result, where you draw or sometimes lose.”
“We just have to put this game behind us and focus on St. Louis,” senior defender Daniel Keller said. “This is a good learning opportunity for us to never take any team that we play lightly. Every day that we step on the field, whether it’s practice or a game, it’s a chance for us to get better, so we just need to take every opportunity and make the most of it.”
Although this game was viewed as a disappointment by the team, the Louisville Cardinals will have a chance at redemption as they travel to take on St. Louis on Tuesday, November 9, at 8:00 pm.
