Eagles Drop Tough AAC Game to Tennessee Wesleyan

Waleska, GA - The defense for Reinhardt Men's Soccer has been superb all season for the Eagles keeping them in games against top-ranked opponents like Dalton State, Life University, and Georgia Gwinnett just to name a few.  Moving into the conference play, the defense kept their pace going behind the excellent goalkeeping from Elijah Clark and the strong backline of Raphael Mospanyuk, Brady Craig, Ivan Patta, and Ian Brunet. The fact is, the team has a lot to owe to its defense keeping them in the tight games, but in Wednesday's AAC game with Tennessee Wesleyan, the defense had trouble keeping the Bulldogs off the board.  It was a tough game with two quality teams, but today it was Tennessee Wesleyan that would come out on top winning, 3-1.

The Bulldogs would strike first in the game scoring in the ninth minute of the game putting them up 1-0 and they would hold that lead going into the halftime break.  The Eagles had a slow start in the game and it took them almost the whole first half to start getting something going offensively.

After the halftime break, Reinhardt would still struggle to get good shots on goal and they played a lot defensively taking several close-range shots from the Bulldogs.  Clark had to have a quality game for the Eagles to have a chance. He ended up making 9 saves in the game with 12 total being shot at him

The second goal of the game would come from a free-kick situation for Tennessee Wesleyan.  The ball was just outside the box on the right-hand side.  The free-kick took the right bounce and landed on the foot of a Bulldog on the far post of the goal and ricocheted past Clark's reaching hands putting Tennessee Wesleyan up with a solid 2-0 lead.

Offensively, the Eagles were missing their leading scorer and the player who controls the ball in the midfield, Maxime Correia. Correia had to sit this game because of yellow card accumulation during the season (5 total yellow cards). This took a lot of the momentum out of the Eagles and his presence on the field was missed.

It would take Reinhardt all the way to the eighth minute of the game before they would get on the board.  A pass was dropped perfectly just past the center line in the space just in front of forward, Jacob Grimmer.  Grimmer had just entered the game and one of his first touches was this scoring play.  He found the ball in space, boxed out the left fullback for the Bulldogs, and dribbled the ball to the right post of the goal.  He calmly placed a ball that went to the far side of the goal and past the Bulldogs diving keeper.  The goal got the crowd excited and showed life that the Eagles were back in the game. 

This would soon fade after Tennessee Wesleyan put the game away permanently in the eight-seventh minute when a goal was scored from the right side on Clark.  This goal deflated Eagles fans in attendance and the outcome soon became inevitable. The Eagles ended up taking the 3-1 loss in the important AAC matchup and moved them currently to sixth place in the standings. 

The one advantage that Reinhardt has over other conference teams is that they still have two games to play compared to just one for the rest.  There are several scenarios on how this will all play out, but the Eagles have a good shot at moving to fourth place in the conference with one or two wins and other teams faltering a bit. Everything will play out this weekend as Reinhardt visits Truett-McConnell on Friday evening and then they travel to Union to finish up the season in Kentucky.  After these two games, the Eagles will find out their final placement for the AAC Tournament

Scoring Summary