BYU is quickly back on losing track

PROVO — A day after shutting out the Nevada Wonders for its first win of the 2004 Premier Development League season, the BYU men's soccer team looked like a One-Win Wonder itself.

The Cougars fell 3-1 to the visiting Wonders on Saturday night at South Field.

BYU (1-4) held an advantage in shots taken, with a season-high 19, while the Wonders managed only eight shots on goal. But Nevada (2-3) proved to be efficient, scoring on three of the eight.

"To get 19 shots and only score one goal is a problem," said BYU coach Chris Watkins, who called the Cougars' midfield struggles "horrible" and "an example of our inexperience."

"The connections from our back four to our middle four — it looked like they had never met before," the Cougar coach said.

The Wonders opened the scoring in the 13th minute, as the Cougars failed to successfully clear the ball in their backfield. Nevada's Anthony Grillo shifted gears through a couple of defenders and took a 20-yard shot from the right front that found the net's left corner.

Nevada barely missed adding a second goal just a minute later, as Nene Coulibaly powered a kick toward a temporarily untended Cougar net. But the ball ricocheted harmlessly off the crossbar and was quickly cleared.

The Wonders increased their 2-0 lead in the 18th minute, as Stanton Smith scored a stop-and-pop goal, putting on the brakes to lose a Cougar defender and rapping a 15-yarder — which proved to be the eventual game-winner — inside the right post beyond the reach of Cougar goalkeeper Brandon Gilliam.

The Cougars scored their sole goal two minutes later when Nevada goalie Mark Mulcady ended up out of position near the front of the box. BYU's Matt Affleck took a looping pass from Gilbert Gaertner to easily find the empty net.

Grillo scored his second goal of the game early in the second half, taking a crossing pass from Renato Pereira off a direct kick and scoring from the right-front in the 49th minute.

The Cougars couldn't make up the two-goal deficit, with Affleck's too-high header the closest of a flurry of attempts in the final half-dozen minutes.

BYU is off for the next two weeks. The Cougars don't play again until they host a pair of 7:30 p.m. Memorial Day weekend matches — the Southern California Seahorses on Friday, May 28, and the Colorado Springs Blizzards on Saturday, May 29.

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