Roundup: Scots let close game with Patriots get away in 2nd half

LAURINBURG — It was a tale of two halves for Scotland against Pinecrest on the soccer pitch Monday evening.

In the first 40 minutes of play, the Fighting Scots were shutout but had limited the Patriots to only two late goals with a chance to comeback in the second half. That didn’t happen, however. In fact, it was a complete 180-degree turn.

The Scots allowed seven second-half goals and were mercy-ruled with 2:36 left in the game as the Patriots won 9-0. This season, it’s the third time Scotland has lost via a mercy rule.

“Tonight was tough. It was real tough knowing that these boys could have played a little bit better than they did,” Scotland head coach Orrick McDougald said. “The defense first half played lights out. I don’t know what happened in the second half. We told them we can teach touches and stuff like that. But when it comes to being aggressive, we weren’t aggressive like we were the last two games. We didn’t attack the balls. We let them dictate and move on the field. We just did not do what we talked about before the game. We’ve just got to play better mentally. Physically, I think we’re there in a sense. But we’ve just got to put that energy onto the field.”

Scotland (1-4-1, 0-4 Sandhills Athletic Conference) held Pinecrest (7-3-1, 2-1-1 SAC) scoreless for the first 22:50 of the first half before Harrison McMinimy pushed the ball around Scotland goalkeeper Jack Herr, who tried to get on the ball, and kicked it into an open net to make the score 1-0. Pinecrest’s second goal before the half came roughly six minutes later from Will Black.

“Just playing our zone,” McDougald said about his team’s attempt to pressure the Patriots early. “We played our positions like we’re supposed to. We didn’t over-pursue. We communicated, we rotated like we’re supposed to, and that worked.”

To make it tougher on Pinecrest to score in the second half, McDougald made a defensive adjustment during the break.

“We put some things in place to try to help the back end,” McDougald said. “Everything that they (Pinecrest) were doing was coming from the middle. And we weren’t playing aggressive enough in the middle, so we tried to put some extra help in there and extra help on the back.”

The change seemed to work for the first four minutes — until two costly penalties in the box by Scotland’s Myles Norton led to back-to-back successful penalty kicks two-and-a-half minutes apart from McMinimy and David Grant.

“It just shut us down mentally and emotionally. It killed us,” McDougald said about the penalty kicks. “The thing about it is, before we went back out, we said we don’t want 11 people in the box. On one of their free kicks, we had all 11 players in the box, and we don’t even coach that.”

The goals helped the Patriots go on a scoring barrage up until the midway point of the half. Giovanni Patterson and Joey DiCarlo scored after the ball deflected off of Herr and went directly to them for easy goals. And DiCarlo scored another goal — Pinecrest’s seventh — after he kicked it into the net off of his back heel.

Herr was taken out the game after that in place of Christopher White. White allowed Josh Mandell to score with 6:25 left and Cooper Malloy to get one, too, which put the game to bed.

The Scots had just one shot on goal in each half; the first coming from Matthew White and the other from Eli Clark.

Herr had 15 saves on the night but earned a lot of praise from McDougald after the game.

“Jack, he saved us. (The) game ball went to Jack today, regardless of the outcome of the game,” McDougald said. “He got the game ball because he made some saves today that saved us a whole lot. God knows he saved us a lot tonight. Kudos to him.”

Scotland plays at Lee County on Wednesday.

“I know they’re a little down, and my speech tonight probably wasn’t what they wanted to hear when it comes to boosting their morale,” McDougald said. “I’ve got a few things tomorrow in practice. They think it’s going to be a crazy and hard practice, but we’re going to look at film first and come out and probably do something a little fun to break the ice or whatever that we’ve got to do to try to get them smiling again. Fussing and making them run and making them do crazy things isn’t going to help their morale at this particular point when you get beat like this. So, we’re going to do something a little fun tomorrow. Watch some film and see what we can do to give Lee County a challenge.”

Lady Scots golf competes at Foxfire

The Scotland women’s golf team participated in their second Sandhills Athletic Conference meet on Monday at Foxfire Resort and Golf, a home meet for Richmond.

Scotland had a fourth-place finish with a team score of 167 and earned three points. Pinecrest placed first and earned six points, Union Pines was second and got five points, Lee County finished third and received four points, and Southern Lee came in fifth and took one point. Hoke County did not have enough golfers present to qualify for team points.

Claire Smith had a team-best score of 50 for the Lady Scots, Bina Smith made her first appearance of the season and shot a 60, Delaney Pittman had a 57, and Karli Jacquez finished with a 62.

Scotland plays at Sanford Golf Course on Sep. 25.