PLNU Men's Soccer wasted no time against Hawaii Hilo on Monday, scoring a goal just over a minute into the match to send the Sea Lions on their way to a comprehensive 3-0 home win.
"I thought we controlled the game and I thought they didn't have a ton of looks," Head Coach
Phil Wolf said. "For me, what I want is control of the game, so 63% possession tells me that. I want to reduce their chances and one save tells me that. And I want to create chances and score goals.
"I'm happy about the three goals, but I'm really happy about the clean sheet. With good teams, it always starts there."
Austin Lavell opened the scoring for Point Loma just 70 seconds into the match with a powerful right-footed shot from the right side of the box.
Samuel Tuscano's cross from the left flank was only cleared to the top of the box to
Townsend Meyer, whose low drive deflected straight into the path of Lavell, who made no mistake with his effort.
"Last week we came off a 2-0 loss, so we needed to get it going early," Lavell said. "The ball bounced my way in the first minute and I took my chance. It was good for our team and I think it was an important start for us."
Point Loma pressed forward in search of a second, as
Milan Diklic's header hit the post off a Tuscano corner and
Parker Scalzo's header from a
Niko Kaczmarczyk cross went just over the crossbar.
Then from a nearly identical play, Scalzo got his goal the second time of asking, this time from a Tuscano service in the 36th minute.
Marlon Buck played the ball out wide right to Tuscano, who was initially forced back toward his own goal. But Tuscano quickly spun back around to get the ball onto his right foot and curled in a pinpoint cross for Scalzo to head home.
"Coach has been challenging us to be as aggressive as possible," Tuscano said of his mentality on the wing. "When I was out there, I just knew I needed to get the ball in the box as much as possible and play my part.
"The other team was saying, 'He's all left foot, He's all left foot,' so I shifted it to my right foot, bent a ball into the box and Parker was right there to finish it off."
After taking a 2-0 lead into halftime, Point Loma scored a third in the 68th to put the game to bed.
From the backline, center back
Milan Diklic surged on the dribble, playing a penetrating ball that Scalzo let roll past him for
Marlon Buck to run on to. Buck then calmly finished to put the game well out of reach.
With the result in hand, the Sea Lions were able to rotate the squad a little bit to see the game out, with two more games coming up later this week.
"With three games inside of a week, it's so important that we were able to do that," Wolf said. "It was another opportunity for guys to step up and for the most part, you didn't have a major drop in the level."
Point Loma outshot Hilo 23-9, including 9-1 in shots on goal, as the Sea Lions improved to 6-5-3 overall (3-2-1 PacWest) with a victory that was made that much sweeter after the team overcame recent personal tragedy.
"Today we were fighting for a different thing," Lavell said. "We've had some stuff happen the past couple weeks, some stuff that's out of our control. The guys rallied together, came together as a group and played for each other, for a bigger meaning, a bigger story out there. I think that's what helped the guys today."
PLNU now sits in a tie-for-sixth in the PacWest standings on 10 points with four matches to play, but the Sea Lions have at least a game in hand on three of the teams above them and still have two matches to play against those currently ahead of them.
"Unless crazy, crazy things happen, the league is away from us," Wolf said. "I want to finish on a good run here at the end and show that we're a program that's always there. Yeah, we're disappointed we've dropped a result here or there. This year has kind of just been that year, but it's important to me and it's important to the program, that we continue to push."
Point Loma returns home on Thursday for a 3:30 p.m. match against Chaminade.
