By SPENCER BATES
ST. BONAVENTURE — It just wasn’t the day for the St. Bonaventure men’s soccer team.
On the back of a hefty defeat to non-league opponent Cleveland State mid-week, coach Mick Giordano was looking for his side to respond accordingly back in Atlantic 10 play. Unfortunately for him, his side were unable to jump back into the win column, falling 2-0 to Rhode Island, behind an effort he admitted was slow and uncoordinated.
“We were miles off of it,” Giordano said. “We had some stretches, for sure, that were good, but we had too many guys wanting to look for other people to solve their problems for them instead of us being able to step up and go through it. It was just really disappointing, certainly a tough week. We need to have some hard truths, internally, and we need to be able to bounce back right now, more than anything else.”
The Bonnies struggled to pick up any sort of traction against the Rams. Passes out of defense were haphazard and risky, one instance of which nearly gifted Rhody a penalty in the opening half. On top of that, Rhode Island made the most of the substantial possession it was allowed, moving the ball with ease around a stagnant Bona defense.
The most significant bright spot of the first half for the Bonnies is that despite the slow start, they had not conceded before the break. For that, they can thank goalkeeper Felix Schöne, who pulled out a massive save just 12 minutes before the intermission.
“(We were) really sluggish, really slow,” Giordano said. “Obviously, there was a lot of VAR and everything that went on in the first half … but we were just lackluster on the day. We didn’t have the extra edge, and there’s no excuse for it, we just weren’t good enough. Our guys have to understand, if we talk about competing at the highest level within our conference and trying to get to that next level, you can’t take days off.”
Immediately out of the half, things were starting to look up for Bona. Stringing together some moves offensively, it put pressure on a Rhody team that had just one win to its name entering the matchup. In fact, the Bonnies nearly found the game’s breakthrough, but consecutive shots from Callum Shillington wound up blocked and rocketed off the crossbar, respectively.
Big chances left on the table, and ones that Bona would rue being untaken as Rhode Island marched down the field in the seconds that followed and scored its first of the afternoon.
And after they took the lead, the Rams were determined to see it over the line, shifting their lineup into a more defensive shape. One in which the Bonnies struggled to break down.
“We over complicated a lot of things,” Giordano said. “Credit to Rhode Island, they sat in there, especially after they went up 1-0. It’s another opponent that has gone up 1-0, and they sat narrow, sat behind the ball. We have to be better with knowing that means we have to pull them out. You’re going to have to play wide, you’re going to have to move the ball quickly. And unfortunately, we weren’t doing any of that. We just wanted to continue to ram it down centrally. We had one or two moments that came from that, but it was just nowhere near (what we wanted). We just needed to settle down and be able to play a bit more.”
St. Bonaventure’s Brendan Sheehan (11) looks to shield the ball from a Rhode Island defender. (St. Bonaventure Athletics)
The lack of a response was uncharacteristic of this year’s Bona team. As Giordano noted, his team has typically been able to find it within themselves to try and claw back into games after conceding. This time, they were unable to do so.
“We’ve done a decent job this year after we take a goal early,” Giordano said. “For whatever reason, today, we didn’t have it, we didn’t have the extra edge. We went sideways and back a lot, and we allowed them to come out to us, and we allowed them to dictate some things. We didn’t have the verticality of what we needed and that was probably the difference in the game.”
Things only got worse for Bona as its defense was late to react to a deflected shot with just 30 seconds left, leaving Rhode Island with its second, relatively easy, tap-in goal of the game.
According to Giordano, the message he is set to deliver to his team after the defeat will be one urging a change in mentality. He does not want to see two losses completely derail everything they have built over the course of the season and that if they want to take that next step his players need some self-reflection.
“We need to have some guys that will do anything to win a game, and we need to have an entire group like that,” Giordano said. “We can’t have just some of our leaders (with that mentality), not just two, three, four guys. We’ve got to have an entire group that are willing to do anything and everything to go win and get to that next level. That’s where we’ve really fallen off this week, and we have to get back to it. We got to look at ourselves in the mirror.”
The Bonnies will be back in action on Oct. 7 at 3 p.m. when they travel to face Robert Morris.
