An 89th minute penalty kick and eight saves from senior goalkeeper Paul Kruse weren’t enough to help the Creighton men’s soccer team keep up with Tulsa as the Jays fell 2-1 on Thursday night in the first match of their 2021 fall season.
Golden Hurricane sophomore forward Alex Meinhard — the reigning Offensive Player of the Year in the American Athletic Conference — matched Creighton’s entire team with five shots on goal and found the back of the net in the 83rd minute for what ended up being his sixth career game-winning goal. Total shots ended up 17-13, but the quality was overwhelmingly in favor of Tulsa as they finished the night with a 11-5 edge in shots on goal.
“I think Tulsa did a good job to come out and apply pressure on us,” Jays’ third-year head coach Johnny Torres said. “In particular, I felt they had more energy than us in the first half. I think they dictated the game a bit more than we did in the first. I think this was a big part of us being on our back foot really. I give credit to them for being lively, energetic, and hungry for the ball.
“I think we picked it up a little bit in the second half, but again, our lack of fitness showed tonight and Tulsa did a good job pushing us.”
Creighton appeared to have the run of play in the early moments of the match, but couldn’t find connection on a few through balls to the top line. Substituting junior midfielder Dominic Briggs and sophomore forward Duncan McGuire into the game provided moments that could have sparked the Jays, but they again came up empty trying to find the final connection in the attacking third that could have swung some early momentum in CU’s favor. Still, Torres was pleased with the boost he got from his reserves in that situation.
“I thought Duncan and D-Mo did a good job coming in off the bench and giving us a spark. A spark that we needed. We’re going to be playing a lot of good teams and we got to have the best effort from everybody on the field. It’s good to be able to get guys like D-Mo and Duncan to come off the bench and give us a little bit of a jumpstart. However, I’d like the people on the field to be able to give us that same type of energy. That’s where the challenges lies.”
Once Tulsa settled into the match, it felt as if the Jays were chasing the game the rest of the way. They never really could keep the Golden Hurricane attack away from their All-Big East caliber netminder.
Kruse stopped the first eight shots he faced, one shy of tying his career-high, but Tulsa broke through in the 77th minute when senior defender Mariana Fazio redirected a low, line drive corner kick inside the near post to make it 1-0. Meinhard added his eighth career goal a few minutes later, beating Kruse near post with a left-footed strike on the run from just outside the 18-yard box.
“Paul actually had a very good game — he made a lot of saves,” Torres said. “Individually he did a good job tonight even though he gave up two goals and we lost the match. I thought the back line did a pretty good job. I think where we lacked tonight in the defensive department was the defending as a unit. It wasn’t so much our back line letting us down, it was more so us letting ourselves down as a group. Too many unforced errors. At the end of the day, you’re going to get tired if you’re defending three-quarters of the match, and that’s what we did tonight. We didn’t do a good job at dominating the game and keeping possession — Tulsa had the majority of the play, I thought.
“When it’s this hot and humid and you’re defending three-quarters of the match bad things are going to happen.”
The Jays (0-1-0) play their next three matches on the road beginning this Sunday at Saint Louis at 3:00 p.m., which will be broadcast on ESPN+. After that match they will take on last year’s national runner-up Indiana on September 3 followed by Ohio State on September 6 as part of the IU Credit Union/Adidas Classic in Bloomington, Indiana.