SMC men's soccer shut out by Condors

Tuesday afternoon the Santa Monica College men's soccer team left their scoring boots somewhere in the cities of Helsinki, Tampere or Jyväskylä.

After a string of multi-goal games, the Corsairs could not find the finish to stave off a shutout at the hands of the Oxnard College Condors, dropping their seventh game of the season 2-0.

After Condor sophomore forward Jaime Alvarado opened the scoring on a broken attack in the 15th minute, giving freshman goalkeeper Eduardo Garcia all he needed to record his third clean sheet in a row.

The Corsair's could not break the back line of the offense until late in the second half when desperation set in.

"I don't take my clean sheets just by myself," Garcia said. "I give credit to my defense, I believe in them and they believe in me."

After the Alvarado goal, the Condors had similar problems finding the back of the net until Andres Mendoza scored the capper in the 90th minute.

"We really want to improve on finishing chances, because we had a few good ones," Condor head coach Ross Greany said.

The shut out was suprising, considering that the Corsairs were coming off the heels of a 3-1 win over College of the Canyons last Friday.

"The whole season long, we've actually been pretty good about goals," head coach Tim Pierce said. "Today was one of those freakish things where we were struggling to score goals."

It did not help that SMC could not convert on the best chance in the early going when sophomore forward Jonathan Navas was awarded a free kick when sophomore defensive back Elmer Perez earned himself a yellow card on a dirty tackle.

Tuesday showed a change in the attacker of the referees as the normally bombastic Pierce yielded the bully pulpit to Greany and the Oxnard bench.

"[The referee] is a good one [but] he had a special game," Greany said.

Despite the result, Pierce was still proud of the performance.

"I thought the guys played really well and really hard," Pierce said. "I have nothing but good feelings to take away from the game. Aside from the result obviously."

The loss drops the Corsairs to 4-7-4 overall and 4-3-3 in Western State Conference play.

The win improves the WSC leading Condors to 9-3-3 overall and 8-0-2 in conference play.