Mater Dei was more physical than Los Alamitos and the Monarchs seemed to win every ball in the midfield during Friday’s nonleague boys soccer match. Mater Dei’s defenders also did well developing the Monarchs attack.
“They gave us some issues tonight,” Los Alamitos coach Donovan Martinez said.
So Martinez felt a bit fortunate the Griffins left Mater Dei with a 1-0 victory.
Ryan Mendoza scored in the 25th minute, collecting a rebound at the top of the 6-yard box after Andrew Pimentel knocked away a shot by Kevin Herring to record one of his four saves.
The Griffins (3-0-2) had a goal disallowed in the 46th minute when Ryan Ayale was ruled offsides after Adam Havstad sent a long free kick flying to the far post.
“As a team, our overall effort and our overall effectiveness was not good tonight,” Martiez said.
He could find little fault with the Griffins’ defenders. They gave Mater Dei (1-1) few clean looks at the goal. Jon Bruder, Nick Cirrito and Ben Martin all tried to make runs into the box for Mater Dei, but each time they were quickly marked.
“Our back four did very well,” Martinez said. “But we have to work on maintaining intelligent possession and develop an attack out of that.”
In other boys soccer:
Tesoro 2, No. 6 Santa Margarita 1: Andy Nahangi and Jake Terhorst scored for the visiting Titans (1-1) in the nonleague match. Jonathan Stoop scored off an assist from Jonathan Newton for the Eagles (0-3-2).
Valencia 3, El Dorado 1: Devin Cornejo scored two goals to the lead the Tigers (4-0) to a nonleague victory.
Contact the writer: ddottore@ocregister.com
