Boise State slipped away to the Mountain West Conference, and the BSU women’s soccer team slipped away with this year’s Governors’ Cup as well.
The Vandal soccer team took on the Broncos Saturday morning in Boise in the regular season finale, and came home empty handed from a difficult 1-0 loss.
It was an all-too-familiar scene for Idaho as a competitive first half ended scoreless, and gave way to struggles in the second half as the Broncos put through the winning goal in the 70th minute.
“First half was like a pillow fight,” coach Pete Showler said. “We were both trading blows but nothing clear cut …In the second half we just stopped playing the system as well as we had in the first and didn’t adjust as well as we needed to.”
Had the Vandals defeated Boise, it would have meant three consecutive years of Vandal triumph in the round robin rivalry between Idaho, Boise and Idaho State. No team has won three in a row since the conception of the cup.
“We came there to win and we just didn’t do what we needed to do for the full 90 minutes,” Showler said. “We gotta step on the pitch and do the job and we didn’t do it as well as we can.”
The match was the first the Vandals played against the Broncos since the school moved to the Mountain West at the start of the season. Unfamiliarity wasn’t a concern for Showler as his team has had numerous formations thrown against them during the course of the season.
“What we’ve done this year is we’ve adjusted pretty well to different systems that have played against us and I’m very pleased at how we’ve made those adjustments,” he said.
Instead, he believes Idaho’s self-created problems allowed Boise State to take the second-half lead.
“We caused ourselves more problems than I think they caused us,” Showler said. “We made their job easier than it needed to be. We’ll learn from that.”
The Vandals will have to learn if they hope to extend their season to Fresno, Calif., where the conference tournament awaits them.
While the Vandals performed numerous tales of two halves during the regular season, Showler believes the win-or-go-home tournament format will inspire his team to play a solid 90 minutes.
“I think when you get to the conference it’s very different,” Showler said. “They’re going to be focused for that, when everything is a must-win. They’re going to be ready without a doubt.”
Idaho’s first match takes place Thursday at noon against San Jose State whom they lost to 1-0 earlier in the season.