High school soccer: Darts shutout Northridge

LAYTON — Since ripping apart opponents with ruthless precision earlier in the season, Davis hasn't quite been able to put everything back together again.

It's not that the Darts haven't been scoring as many goals — they scored 19 goals over three games at one point, and they were obviously never going to continue to finish at such a prolific rate. However, the thing that's had the Darts concerned is the fact that they simply have not been playing very well.

Davis sweeper Taylor Kloberdanz explained his team's midseason swoon more succinctly.

"We just got so into ourselves that we got cocky," he said.

But if the second half of Davis' 2-0 road win at Northridge on Thursday is any indication, the Darts could be on their way to righting the ship.

Against a team that's actually pretty tough, Davis more or less pinned Northridge in its own half for 40 minutes in the second half. Davis star midfielders Gentrie Maag (nicknamed C-Unit) and Josh Hernandez (nicknamed Fez) sprayed balls all over the field, and the Darts looked every bit like the team that was ripping people apart a month ago.

"I think that if our midfield — Fez and Gentrie — can keep the ball in the center and distribute like they can, we're basically untouchable. When we play like we did in the second half, there's not a team that we can't compete with," said Kloberdanz.

Davis coach Souli Phongsavath switched to a 4-3-3 formation at halftime Thursday, hoping to see how his guys would handle it in case they need to use it in the postseason, but the Darts didn't skip a beat with the new look, a look which included Hernandez out wide.

Leading 1-0 via an Adam West goal early in the first half, Davis doubled its lead when freshman John Taylor slotted home in the 48th minute. And the Darts looked awfully good the rest of the way, even if they failed to finish a number of chances that would've expanded their lead.

Aside from changing the formation, Phongsavath's instructions at halftime were pretty straight-forward, and his guys followed his advice.

"The two things I talked about were possession and then pressuring," said Phongsavath. "We did that, and it was tough for them to get out of their defensive third."

Accordingly, at the other end, Kloberdanz and his fellow defenders were pretty much reduced to spectators for portions of the second half.