PEORIA, ILL. ? The Drake men's soccer (9-4-3, 2-1-1) team dropped its first conference game of the season to Bradley (9-4-3, 2-0-2), 1-0, Saturday.

“Peoria is always an awfully difficult place to play. Bradley plays with such tremendous passion and if you don't match it you will struggle,” said Drake head coach Sean Holmes. “Tonight I thought we coped very well with their level of intensity, but we lost our focus and concentration at the back one time and were severely punished for it.”


The Braves scored the game-winning goal in the 54th minute (53:59) as Drew DeGurian took a pass from Ken Hickman and finished to give Bradley the 1-0 advantage.

The Bulldogs beat Bradley in shots (16-9) and shots on goal (5-4), including taking 11 shots in the second half.

“The last half hour after we went to three at the back, opened them up tremendously. We created some very good opportunities but also left ourselves exposed a couple of times at the back,” added Holmes.

Sophomore Luke Gorczyca (Overland Park, Kan.) led Drake with five shots, while freshman Matt Kuhn (Raytown, Mo.) took three shots, all of which were on goal.

Senior goalkeeper Phillip Breuer (Port Washington, Wis.) made three saves in goal for the Bulldogs. His counterpart, Mike Haynes collected five stops for the Braves.

“The back three of Luke Frieberg, Calvin Clark and Julien Edwards did very well to deal with their counter attacks and goalkeeper Phillip Breuer came up with a couple of superb saves to give us a fighting chance in the dying minutes,” commented Holmes.

“We have repeatedly celebrated the youth of our team, but tonight some of the young players were indeed a bit young. Having said that we created ample chances for ourselves and were perhaps a bit unlucky not to have stolen a point on the night. It was great to have a fit Keith Gorczyca back on the field for 70 minutes. He makes our team a little bit older, wiser and tougher.”

Drake will enjoy a one-week layoff before hosting Creighton Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. at the Cownie Soccer Complex.

“Tomorrow morning the focus on Creighton begins,” concluded Holmes.