IU suffers 3rd loss in a row

Another game, another loss for the IU men’s soccer team.

The No. 10 Hoosiers lost their third straight game — second straight at home —  Sunday, falling 1-0 to No. 5 Creighton.

Creighton scored the only goal of the game in the 41st minute when Dion Acoff beat goalie Luis Soffner in the top right corner on a shot that was deflected.

“Their guy (Acoff) was out wide to our right,” Soffner said after the game. “He cut it in and pulled a couple of moves to get a shot off. Matt McKain blocked it, and an unlucky bounce, I think, hit it off his shin. And it went right over my head under the cross bar. It was pretty lucky for them and pretty unfortunate for us.”

For the third time in the last eight days the Hoosiers (6-3-2, 1-1) said they played well enough to win against a quality opponent, but they fell short again.

“It hurts when you do enough to get a result. That’s the hard part,” IU Coach Todd Yeagley said. “The results haven’t gone our way in a week, and it came in a quick amount of time, so it’s hard.”

Despite the three-game slide, which may suggest Indiana has a lot of changes to make, senior Alec Purdie said he doesn’t see it that way.

“I keep saying it, but we don’t need to change anything,” Purdie said. “We are playing just fine right now. I keep telling the guys that we have had absolute terrible luck.”

Creighton came into the game as one of the top defensive teams in the country. It showed as the players frustrated Indiana’s offensive attack all afternoon.

The Blue Jays improved to 10-1 with the victory. Of those 10 wins, nine have been
shutouts.

“For as much possession that we had near the final third, I think we have to be more aggressive,” Yeagley said. “We need to get a little separation, and maybe you get a bounce. And we have to take those chances. We have to take some more opportunities on finishes.”

Indiana will take the field again Wednesday when they visit Butler. Senior Tommy Meyer said he feels the key to ending this slide is to not overthink what each player has to do.

“We have to keep playing like we have been. We have been better every game,” Meyer said. “The goals will come. Our luck will change a little bit, and things will go our way.”

With seven games remaining in the regular season, the Hoosiers said they know what they need to do to get their season turned around.

“We have played well enough in all three games to get results in all of them,” Soffner said. “We just let down a couple games for a couple minutes, and the other team got lucky a couple of times. Right now, with the Louisville and Creighton games, we know we can hang, if not take it to some of the best teams in the country.”