EDWARDSVILLE – Belleville East seemed to have a good game plan going up against Edwardsville at Tiger Stadium Tuesday night.
The Lancers had a well-organized defensive plan that stymied the Tiger offense throughout the first half. But Alec Mills found a way to score past East goalkeeper Chandler Eason in the 53rd minute, and that opened up the floodgates as the Tigers went on to take a 4-0 Southwestern Conference win over East.
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The win put EHS at 4-0-1 overall on the season and 1-0-1 in the league; East fell to 0-3 overall, 0-1 in the SWC with the result.
“The fortunate thing for Belleville East is that it goes down as 4-0, but you have to understand that it's 0-0 at the half,” said Tiger coach Mark Heiderscheid. “I thought, in terms of organization and in terms of game plan – we've seen it recently in (this year's UEFA Euro 2016 tournament in France) and (last year's FIFA) Women's World Cup (in Canada) – I thought they did an outstanding job of staying compact, staying organized, and really, while we had possession, weren't creating very many, if any, bona fide chances.
“I thought their shape (of the defense) was magnificent on this one, and really, East has to be commended – we get 13 minutes into the second half and it's a thing where they continued to keep their shape, the organization was great, the work rate was fantastic. Once a team scores, whenever a game's going to be like this...it's tricky. Do you pull out (your defense) and risk going down by 4-0 (or) do you sit there and say a 1-0 loss is a 1-0 loss?”
“Just knowing Edwardsville is always tactically sound – they can always keep a ball – and with us being a young group, we wanted to kind of sit in a little bit and be able to counter and we did it up until the 53rd minute,” said first-year Lancer coach James Chambers. “They caught us on a service; they gave one up and we tried to open up a little bit to go after them and they got a couple more (goals).
“Either you sit back and lose 1-0 or you try to run after them and try to get that counter-goal back, but unfortunately, it didn't go to our advantage today.”
Mills' goal in the 53rd minute came when Riley Patterson sent a high ball towards goal and Mills went up and headed it into the back of the net behind Eason to put the Tigers up 1-0. Michael Glisson then sprinted to the right and cut into the goal area, getting a shot past Eason in the 69th minute to extend the lead to 2-0 for Edwardsville.
In the 70th minute, Mills scored again when Hanu Freese got the ball to him, Mills taking a shot that got past Eason to move the Tigers to 3-0 ahead before Mohammad Hamad beat Eason low to the left side on a free kick in the 71st minute to complete the scoring.
Daniel Picchiotti had three saves on the night for the Tigers to record the clean sheet. The Tigers got 16 shots on goal and had three corner kicks on the night.
Goals from Malik Robinson and Ryan Luer gave the Tiger JV a 2-0 win over the Lancers in the evening's curtain raiser. Edwardsville returns to the pitch at 6:45 p.m. Thursday when they travel to O'Fallon for a SWC match.
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Feeney, 56, is a native of Granite City and graduated from Granite City South in 1978. He was a part-time writer for the old Granite City Journal from 1979-84 before attending Eastern Illinois University in Charleston,
from which he earned his BA in journalism in 1988. He has worked for newspapers in Sikeston, Mo., Rocky Mount, N.C., Seneca, S.C. and in Charleston-Mattoon. He also worked for the old St. Clair County Suburban
Journals.
