Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – Three early unforced errors leading to goals against put the MacEwan Griffins men's soccer team in too deep a hole to climb out of in a 5-0 loss to the cross-town rival Alberta Golden Bears on Sunday afternoon at Foote Field.
"To be completely honest and blunt, we spotted them three goals in the first (half) on straight terrible errors on our end," said Griffins head coach Adam Loga. "It's a tough hole to climb out of. Legitimately three unforced blatant errors and that was essentially the ball game."
Alberta's Ajeej Sarkaria tied and broke the Canada West record for the most career goals in conference history with two of those first-half tallies and ended up netting a hat-trick on the Bears' fifth of the game in the 61st minute – his 41st career goal.
Carlos Patino scored the other two for the Bears (1-0-1), who pulled four points out of the season-opening weekend series against MacEwan (0-1-1) after the teams tied 1-1 on Saturday at Clareview Stadium.
Loga wasn't pleased with the early effort from a few of his players as two goals came on whiffed plays by defenders and another was the result of an errant pass in front of their own net.
"I think it's a lack of focus, it's a lack of mental preparation," he said. "We knew it was going to be tough today, given we didn't have our depth intact due to some guys unable to get eligible, so it shifted our game plan a little bit.
"I think it was a lack of focus in preparation from an individual standpoint. It wasn't so much of a collective, it was when you break it down player by player. That's what needs to be taken from it. No disrespect to U of A – they're a talented team – but at the same time you can't give talented teams like that three direct opportunities."
Alberta outshot MacEwan 18-6 (11-2 on goal). Josh Stayko stopped six for the Griffins, while Liam Collens earned the clean sheet for the Golden Bears.
The Griffins will learn from it and flush it before their next action when they host Saskatchewan Oct. 2-3 (2:30 p.m. both days, Clarke Stadium, Canada West TV presented by Co-op).
"It's one of those that you send the message about preparation but you just have to forget some of it," said Loga.
"A lot of it was just mental errors and continuing to compete. Nothing's handed to us. We knew it was going to be a tough game of a doubleheader. We knew we weren't as fresh as we want to be. We knew we had to embrace the grind. Some of us did, but 11 wasn't one today."
