Men’s soccer posts first win of 2012 season

In their second exhibition game of the 2012 season, BYU defeated the Colorado Mesa University Mavericks 4-1 under the lights at South Field on Saturday night.

“The formations were tight and we played cleanly,” said BYU forward David Gates who had two goals on the night.

The Cougars wasted no time getting to work on CMU and took control of the scoreboard early. In just the seventh minute, Scott Heaton put the ball in front of the goal to Jace Green who put it in the net to give BYU a quick 1-0 lead. CMU tightened up their defense as a result though, and the next six shots of the half from the Cougars ended in the keeper’s hands.

The Mavericks’ Bashiru Ali, named to the all-conference team in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference last year, was held inside the box and awarded a penalty kick by the officials in the 45th minute. He converted the PK to square the score at 1-1 and end the first half.

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Officials red-carded CMU’s Sean Foster five minutes into the second half forcing his team to play with only ten on the field for the remainder of the game. One minute later, Gates headed in the go-ahead goal off of a corner kick.

“I haven’t had a header for a while now, so it felt good to get one again,” Gates said. “It got the team pumped up to be back in the lead…props to the team for running a great set play and to the coaches for drilling us on corner kicks.”

Assistant Coach Chad Sackett said that the team has practiced more corner kicks during the last week than any other skill.

“We’ve been working a lot on possession. We want structure in set pieces like corner kicks so we worked on them more than ever,” Sackett said. “It was great to see that work pay off.”

BYU kept the momentum from Gates’ goal and began wearing down the CMU defense by keeping the ball on the Maverick’s side of the field. In the 59th minute, Garrett Losee scored off of a corner kick by teammate Colby Bauer. Gates then put in his second goal of the night in the 74th minute to seal the Cougar victory.

Garrett had a great shot to commit the defense and the goalie to the far post,” Gates said. “Credit goes to him for setting up the shot, I just got my foot through the defense to finish the play.”

The Cougars turn their focus now to their next opponent, Real Salt Lake. They are set to play at South Field on May 19 at 5 p.m.