MANCHESTER -- On a day when the weather resembled that of a football match in England with drizzle, fog and low cloud cover, Midd-West fell 3-0 to Fleetwood in the Class AA quarterfinals at Northeastern High School.
"For large parts of the first half, I was waiting for our guys to get off the bus," Midd-West coach Chris Sauer said. "It was really a slow start and some of the things that we talked about, things that we definitely didn't want to happen, like giving (Jeff) Turner space in the middle, we did."
Fleetwood (26-1) used its team speed to outhustle the Mustangs (17-4-1) from the start, playing the majority of the first half in the Mustangs' ends that resulted in a commanding edge in shots (9-0) and corners (11-0).
"We didn't step out with much intensity, we let a lot of balls bounce," Sauer added. "You play like that against anybody at this level, at this stage of the game, and they're going to take it to you, and we allowed them to do that."
Caleb Bauer gave the Tigers a 1-0 lead 12 minutes into the first half. Bauer brought the ball down off his chest following a failed clearing header attempt by Midd-West and beat goalie Mike Iaderosa to the far side.
"The disappointing thing was that after we had given up the first goal, for some reason, we didn't realize that we still had a good 60 minutes to play," Sauer said. "Our heads went down and our shoulders kind of sunk a little bit and for whatever reason, the first goal affected us. It was almost a matter of time before they got the second goal, as we weren't defending well as a team."
Less than four minutes later, Fleetwood went up 2-0 when Jose Nunez scored as his shot caromed in off the cross bar.
The Mustangs seemed to respond in the second half and controlled the tempo for a better part of it before Mike Ruh made it 3-0 Fleetwood on a ball that ping-ponged off several players before he kicked it in early in the second half. It was the 14th time this year that the Tigers have scored three or more goals in a game.
"Our guys were mentally so worried about making sure that they were back and making sure that I am on this guy,'" Sauer noted. "What you don't do against teams like (Fleetwood) is that you don't sit back. You have to play them and we didn't attack them. We knew for parts of the game they were going to possess the ball and we talked about that. We talked about not panicking and just relax, but we didn't handle it very well."
Midd-West appeared to get on the scoreboard late in the game, but the goal was disallowed on an offsides call.
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