WINONA, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University men's soccer team closed out its 2008 season with a Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference contest against Bethel.
And the Cardinals opened their 2009 conference schedule with a matchup against the Royals.
Unfortunately for the Cardinals, the result wasn't the same.
SMU, which got a pair of goals from
Andy Adair (Woodbury, Minn.) — the second in overtime — to beat the Royals 2-1 in that regular-season finale a year ago, could only muster a late goal by
Jacob Bina (West Salem, Wis.) Tuesday evening, as the Royals handed the Cardinals a 3-1 setback at Ochrymowycz Field.
“That's the best Bethel team I have seen in my four years here,” said SMU coach Chris Dembiec. “They are a solid team and they played a very good game. But to be honest, so did we — we did a lot of good things out there tonight, we just made some mistakes that really cost us.”
The first mistake came in the game's 11th minute, as SMU was whistled for a foul in their own box, and Andreas Scott converted the penalty kick to give the Royals a 1-0 advantage.
Which was exactly where the Cardinals were a year ago against the Royals, when Adair came to the rescue with back-to-back goals in the SMU OT win.
This time, however, there were not Adair — or any Cardinal — heroics, as Bethel added two second-half goals to make it 3-0, before Bina collected his first collegiate goal with less than eight minutes remaining in regulation.
“You hate to talk about silver linings, but there really were some for us,” said Dembiec, whose team is back in action Saturday, traveling to Northfield, Minn., for a 1 p.m. conference contest against Carleton. “Overall, I was pretty pleased with our performance — we just have to tighten up a few things and we'll be OK.
“The effort was there, we just didn't get the result we were looking for.”
