Aug. 30, 2009
Contact: Brian McCann
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Viking defense, which had seemed impenetrable for the first 70 minutes, made a pair of lapses in the final 12 minutes, allowing Eastern Illinois to score two goals to rally past Cleveland State, 2-1, on Sunday afternoon at Krenzler Field.
The loss, which dropped the Vikings to 1-2 on the year, came on Cancer Awareness Day at Krenzler Field, an event that led to a record crowd of 492 attending the match.
"I am disappointed about this one," CSU head coach Derrek Falor said. "Coming off the win over Kent State on Friday, I thought that we would come out and take control today. We did that to an extent but we forgot to put goals on the scoreboard.
"We were too much into ball control today. We had beautiful possessions where we had six, seven touches to work it towards goal but then we would not get a shot off because we tried to be too fine, tried to make the possession too perfect. We would get to the ninth or 10th touch and by then, the defense would collapse and we would miss out on the opportunity.
"It is unfortunate because we put on a perfect event to call attention to a terrible disease and we put on a poor performance for our fans," Falor added.
Play was slow in the first 45 minutes as a strong wind, overcast skies and at times a light rain contributed to a scoreless tie at the intermission. There were just six shots in the opening stanza with CSU owning a 5-1 edge with two shots being on goal.
The Vikings opened the scoring in the 57th minute when Natalie Daniels worked the ball into the box and slipped a pass to Marley Greiner as the defense converged. Greiner turned and blasted a shot from 15 yards out the beat Panther goaltender Kaylin Lorbert high and to the right.
The goal was the first of the season for Greiner while Daniels, who had three assists in the preseason, was credited with her first assist.
Cleveland State appeared to be headed to the win until the 78:00 mark when Ashley Eck evened the contest at 1-1 when she took a pass from Alexis Miller and one-timed a shot low and to the right of CSU's Kelly Zinkiewich.
"That goal should never have happened because after we scored the first goal, we should have kept the pressure on and put a second goal on the board. Instead of being up 2-0 and playing out the final minutes, we let them tie the game up because our defense let a ball get past them," Falor said.
Eastern Illinois scored the game-winner at the 85:39 mark when Jessie Morgan fed Miller with a nice pass in transition and Miller finished from about five yards out.
CSU had a 9-4 edge in shots in the game and a 6-3 lead in shots on goal but that was not a factor. Lorbert made five saves to get the win for EIU while Zinkiewich made one save for the Vikings.
Cleveland State continues its non-conference schedule this week with matches at Eastern Kentucky (Sept. 4) and Ohio University (Sept. 6).
