THE MATCHUP

Saint Mary's vs. Concordia vs. Saturday, Oct. 2, 2004 Ochrymowycz Field 2 p.m.

GAMEDAY PLAYER PROFILE

Andy Kozar Year Junior Position Midfield Hometown Libertyville, IL

For the official GameDay Program for today's game pdf / click here (pdf)

WINONA, Minn. — Saint Mary’s University men’s soccer coach Eric Luzzi is confident that his team is going to break out of its scoring slump.

He knows it’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of when.

And he’s becoming impatient — very impatient.

The Cardinals suffered their fourth straight shutout loss Wednesday, as Gustavus scored twice in the first half and once in the second en route to a 3-0 win.

“For the first 20 minutes, against the fifth-ranked team in the country, we played them dead even — it was as even a game as possible,” said Luzzi. “We played very well, we were moving the ball, making simple passes, making good decisions … .”

And then the Gusties scored.

Caleb Bousu beat SMU goalkeeper Bob Endemann at the 25-minute mark of the first half, and things just snowballed from there.

“It was like, after (Gustavus) scored that first goal, we kind of let down a bit,” said Luzzi. “We didn’t play poorly (after that first goal), but we didn’t play as well as we had before they scored.

“I was pretty happy with our performance, we have been playing better the last couple of games, it’s just that we are making a couple of mistakes, and teams are punishing us for it.”

Luzzi is hoping the Cardinals can turn that around — do a little punishing, rather than being on the other end — as they play host to Concordia this afternoon.

“We’ve just got to keep doing the things we’ve been working on in practice,” Luzzi said. “We’re getting our chances, we’re just not finishing. Sooner or later the ball is going to bounce our way — and once we get that monkey off our bakcs, look out.”