Men’s soccer splits a pair

The Pitt men’s soccer team almost finished the weekend undefeated, but had to settle for a… The Pitt men’s soccer team almost finished the weekend undefeated, but had to settle for a split after losing to South Florida 1-0 on Sunday at Founders Field. This followed a 1-0 win over DePaul in the Panthers’ home Big East opener.

Senior goalie Justin Lowery improved drastically from earlier in the season, stopping 15 of 16 shots in the two games combined, but it wasn’t enough in the second game.

Pitt 1, DePaul 0

The win over the Blue Demons gave the Panthers their first Big East win and also their initial shutout. Senior Thomas DeCato’s goal off Tyler Bastianelli’s corner kick right before the first half ended in the 45th minute proved to be the difference Pitt needed to win.

There were three combined yellow cards in Friday’s game, plus a red card on junior midfielder Mike Cunha in the 55th minute. This left Pitt a man down for the remainder of the second half and Cunha out of Sunday’s contest.

Pitt’s defense was prowling in that second half. Despite 11 Blue Demon corner kicks and seven shots, DePaul only attempted one shot on goal, enough to give Lowery a total of five saves for the night.

DePaul (2-4-2 overall, 0-3-1 Big East) was led by goalie Brian Visser’s three saves and two Luke Rojo shots on goal. The Blue Demons outshot the Panthers 11-4, but to no avail.

South Florida 1, Pitt 0

Despite a superb effort by Lowery against South Florida’s pressing attack, Pitt fell to the Bulls 1-0 on Sunday. The University of South Florida (5-3-0, 4-0-0), despite being new to the Big East this season, currently sits atop the Big East standings after finishing the weekend undefeated.

It was Pitt’s first loss to a team outside of the Philadelphia region after losing at Villanova and Rutgers last weekend and to Drexel and LaSalle three weeks ago, largely because of the Bulls holding an 11-5 shot advantage.

The Bulls were in the driver’s seat for the second half and outshot the Panthers 9-3. One of these came off the foot of Jason Devinish in the 50th minute for the game’s only goal.

DeCato followed his goal on Friday with three first-half shots. All were unsuccessful, however, including one snuffed by USF goalie Dane Brenner’s leaping save in the 31st minute.

Although head coach Joe Luxbacher did not quite get the results he wanted, he still relished the Panthers’ improvement, especially Lowery’s.

“Lowery had a good weekend. He struggled up until this weekend and then Friday night he played well and today played well, so that’s a positive,” Luxbacher said. “The thing about this weekend is we’re playing better [defense]. Coming in to this weekend, we’ve had defensive lapses and whatever and really, we had two solid defensive games.

“That’s what we need every game. Obviously, we need to score goals, but the positive is defensively, we played real well,” Luxbacher said. “Coming in, our goal was to play a sound defensive game and [on] chance opportunities. Set plays and corners. We had chances, the one header we didn’t get it in and they did. Guys played disciplined. We obviously wanted to get a result and we didn’t really create a lot up front.”

Lowery agreed. “They had a good number of attacks, but mainly we were sound defensively. There were no breakdowns in defense so I thought we played pretty well. I thought we held our own. They’re a very attacking team, and normally, they’re putting 3 to 4 goals in per game. I thought we played well defensively, we just need to score more goals.”

The Panthers now hold a 2-5-1 record overall and 1-3 mark in the Big East. Their next match is this Saturday against Seton Hall at Founders Field with kickoff set for 1 p.m.