St. Norbert Outlasts Beloit

St. Norbert Outlasts Beloit

In a game that featured two teams with two different backgrounds, the action did not disappoint. St. Norbert College came in as a (until very recently) nationally ranked team who returned nearly all eleven starts, plus defensive power house Petro Czerniak. Despite losing their initial conference match to the young but scrappy Foresters from Lake Forest, the Green Knights came into Saturday’s contest as favorites.

The Beloit Buccaneers have been a surprise so far in 2009: Beating Rockford, Cornell, Edgewood and Ripon, with its only loss coming at the hands of Concordia (Wisconsin). The surprise isn’t so much that Beloit has been winning games; it’s that they have never been shut out and have been getting majority of scoring from freshmen Jackson Wilkins (brother to Senior All-Conference midfielder Bo Wilkins).

Throughout the game’s first 20 minutes, St. Norbert looked like they had the advantage. Their attacks consisted of multiple short passes, with well timed runs off the ball. Their closest opportunity to score in the first half was a 25 yard volley fired wildly high by Adam Sanchez. Almost immediately following the shot, the tides seemed to turn in favor of Beloit.

Every 50-50 ball, second ball and tackle seemed to bounce Beloit’s way. Forward Jackson Wilkins and Brian Maunze were constantly applying pressure by running at the Green Knight defenders. St. Norbert seemed to crumble under the pressure allowing countless shots towards the end of the first half and the beginning of the second half. However, before the first half wrapped up, Ben Vanden Avond drew a questionable penalty kick in the 39th minute. Vanden Avond stepped up to take the shot, burying it past a diving Nathan Lipps (video will be posted soon).

Beloit continued their surge well into the second half. Right defensive back, Adam Jones, finally drew a yellow card with his second or third spikes up slide tackle in the 59th minute. When the 65th minute came around, Beloit had drawn yet another foul from St. Norbert’s back line from 18 and a half yards out, in the exact center of the field. Bo Wilkins lined up the shot, driving it into the right upper 90 of the goal, tying the game at one a piece.

Beloit and St. Norbert hit a lull for nearly the rest of the match and first overtime period. Within the first three minutes of the second overtime, Vanden Avond came calling yet again. Off a cross from the right corner flag and a failed clear by Beloit’s defenders, Vanden Avond slid in with a defender on his hip driving the ball into the top shelf of the net.

In a match as closely contested as this, it is hard to say either team deserved to lose but in this writer’s opinion, the better team walked away with the win.

St. Norbert 2
Beloit 1

To my defense, my teammates that had a similar angle to that of the red said it really looked like I was fouled hard.

Ref, iPhone autoreplaces my words sometimes

It's not your fault it was a good or bad call, the call was made and you hit the shot. Nice job on the two goals for that match, you couldn't ask for a much bigger win at this point in the year.

Any chance of getting the video up today of the 3 goals?

Might be a day or two, there's been a problem with the connection. I need to be smarter...

So which is it. Is St. Norbert down or is Beloit up? Judging by the other scores Beloit looks like they have found a decent style of attack. I would guess that St. Norbert is more 11 solid players with no standouts. It's their staple on this league, although Adam Winters and Grant Markraff were pretty good standouts for a while.

How is Vanden Avond? Two clutch goals (which I haven't seen yet, thanks carter) to win a must win for Norbert. Does Carlson have some competition for player of the year?

Vanden avond sucks.

lol

I never said that but don't say it too loud, you're going to lose your votes for POY.

We have a log way to go before we even get into those conversations. If we don't start playing well I am more worried about making the conf tourney. Tomorrows owo game will be huge. Hopefully we come out with some fire and make this game a good one. Anyone going to catch the game?

I would go Ben but we have a game, too bad cause it would have been a nice one to watch. Good luck they are a solid team.

Drago, you forgot to give me the disc so I could upload it to youtube lol. Give it to me tomorrow at the game.

And I wouldnt say Beloit is up. Competition they have played is pretty poor. They looked good against St.Norberts though. I was in attendance and the game could have gone either way. Goal in overtime was fortunate to get to BenVA after going through 4 players in the box. Then he did the rest by cutting the defender to his left foot and a very nice finish into the net.

Ollie, thats the description lol but I will do my best to get the video up here when Drago gets me the disc..

It's not in disk form right now....it's in DV form. As long as my chord isn't the issue it should work. Do you have class right now? If you don't, i can swing by before i have little kids' practice (don't ask, haha).

We got woooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkkkkkeeeeeeeeeeedddddd it was pathetic

Craig told me he has the video on his computer, we just need to get it on Youtube is all. Soon!

What happened in the game? You guys looked pretty stout in person, i can barely believe you lost.

It all comes down to the conference tournament either way. You'll be a top 4 team, no question.

The game was against Oshkosh. Only conference match ups matter in the MWC.

Interesting loss though. Early in the year St. Norbert was rated higher than Oshkosh but I did not know why. I am looking forward to Oshkosh taking on Carroll, it should answer a lot of questions in terms of Wisconsin college soccer.

Just curious....What questions will it answer Ollie???