The No. 2 nationally ranked Marshall Men’s Soccer won its third game of the season 6-1 against the Loyola University MD Greyhounds at Hoops Family Field on Monday, Sept. 2, making their 2024 season record 2-1-0.
“I think we started a little slowly, but as the game went on, we figured out what we needed to do. I thought the guys executed what they needed to do quite well,” head coach Chris Grassie said. “We performed well, and a lot of the guys went on and did a good job.”
Marshall outshot Loyola 21 to five. The Herd also had 11 shots on goal, while the Greyhounds only had two shots on goal.
“The guys are starting to get the concepts, so it’s really nice to see, but we still have a long way to go to be the team that we can be,” Grassie said about the high offensive game that Marshall performed.
Marshall lost against Xavier University on Aug. 29, so the pressure was on the Thundering Herd to perform well at this game.
“It was great to bounce back and regain our confidence after our tough loss last week to Xavier,” Marshall’s Marco Silva said about the game. “Even after we gave up a goal a minute into the game, we didn’t let that get to us and continued to play our game and just let the goals flow in.”
“We don’t want to get too high; we don’t want to go too low after Xavier, not too high after this, we will just have to keep moving forward,” Grassie said about getting back up after the loss. “We definitely have the mindset and expectation to win championships, and we feel this way every year,” Silva said. “However, we can’t get to that point unless we take advantage of the game ahead of us and go one game at a time.”
The game started at 1:00 p.m., and less than a minute into the game, the Greyhounds struck first with a goal from junior Sean McEvoy. Marshall then attacked back with a 15th minute penalty kick scored by sophomore Rai Pinto making the score 1-1.
In the 17th minute, Loic Sany Kong scored off a pass from Theo Godard, scoring in his Marshall debut making the score 2-1.
At exactly the 35th minute, Marco Silva scored after a blocked shot making the score 3-1.
After having his shot blocked earlier in the game, Lineker Rodrigues dos Santos scored in the 43rd minute, making the score 4-1 by halftime.
After a quiet spell in goal scoring, Marshall had one last offensive push for two more goals in the 2nd half: one goal scored by Aymane Sordo in the 82nd minute and one goal scored by Pablo Simon in the 87th minute, making the final score 6-1 in Marshall’s 2nd win of the season.
The Thundering Herd will face the High Point University Panthers on Friday, Sept. 6, at Hoops Family Field. The game will start at 7:15 p.m.
Nate Harrah can be contacted at [email protected].
