Coming To A Close

The last couple of games in the regular season always leave a lasting mood on how the season as a whole has been. It doesn’t matter how well you have been doing throughout the year or how good of a season you had, you are only as good as your last game.

That being said we may have had our biggest amount of season wins since 2005 we still hadn’t clinched a seat at the Horizon League conference tournament table.

Wed, 24, we took on Detroit at Engelmann stadium. Engelmann has been somewhat of a fortress this season, helping us post a 5-0 record. This record came to and end, after the tie finished in a 1-0 loss, Detroit’s winner coming from a dubious penalty decision in the 46^th minute. Senior Jamie Bladen saw a red card after conceding the penalty kick.

Down to 10 men for most of the second half I felt we dominated though as the statistics would show. We out shot Detroit 14-4 and had 7 more corners. With all our pressure though we could not seem to make it pay and unfortunately came out of the game with nothing.

“I am more proud of you tonight than I have been all season,” coach Kelderman said. “You battled liked dogs out there and can leave here as proud as a peacock.” 

Friday we took to the road again, travelling to Ohio. Our fourth trip this year to a state where we haven’t had any success. This time we were heading to Wright State in our final road game of the 2012 regular schedule knowing that a win would guarantee us a place in the post-season tournament.

The brave battling performance of Wednesday against Detroit had long passed, as in the first 45 minutes of soccer there was only one team on the pitch. That unfortunately was Wright State. With a firm and necessary warning from our coach to step up our performance in the second half didn’t help us play any better. We went down 1-0.

There game itself wasn’t one that would be remembered for any soccer talent or moment of magic. It was a simple case of Wright State wanting it and having the will to win more than we did. Perhaps the whole of the raiders team was buoyed be their senior night. Whatever the case was we had left our true selves behind in Milwaukee and didn’t do the great soccer program that we have at UWM any justice.

We head into our game against Valparaiso at the weekend needing a win to make the conference tournament.