After blazing through their first four games of the season undefeated, men's soccer head coach Richie Grant had a funny way of looking at his team's back-to-back losses to Creighton and Drake this weekend.
He wasn't upset or even very frustrated.
"I think it was a great experience for us," Grant said. "Going into conference play, I think it was important for us to have a road trip like that."
The Tigers (4-2-0), defending Conference USA champions and ranked No. 23 in the nation going into the weekend, absorbed their first two losses of the season, a 3-1 folly at Creighton (3-0-1) Friday followed by a disappointing 3-2 loss at Drake (2-3-1) Sunday.
"I think we learned a lot from it," Grant said. "We played in an extremely tough environment with great fans at (No. 15) Creighton, and it gave us a taste of that kind of intensity."
The Tigers fell behind early in both matches, failing to score the all-important first goal.
Memphis made a living by playing with the lead last year by scoring first and letting the opponent play catch up the rest of the match.
"But this time we didn't do that," said sophomore midfielder Jared Britcher, who scored two goals over the weekend road trip, one in the 82nd minute against Creighton and another in the 78th minute at Drake.
"And it seems like when you get scored on early we were kind of panicking, and we just started chasing them around. Last year we were the team doing that."
For the Tigers to be effective and make the same kind of run that led them to the NCAA tournament last year, they will have to be more aggressive in the first minutes of matches.
Scoring first is not a game plan. It's the only plan.
"The first goal is so vital in the game," Grant said. "We're a team that's very, very good when we're playing with the lead. We need to be always searching for that.
"This weekend the two teams got there before us, and that was the difference in the game."
But the sky isn't falling just yet at Echols field, Grant assured.
"There's no crisis over here," Grant said. "It has opened our eyes to the demand of conference soccer, and we realize we're going to have to work harder on the road if we want to get wins. We just need to get some confidence back."
Confidence seems to be the most pressing issue for the Tigers these days as they appear to be a team still searching to find last year's swagger.
"We need to be more confident," Britcher said. "We know what we're capable of, and it seems like we're not acting like it. We were going out there [this weekend] and being afraid or intimidated and we have to be confident like we were last year."
Memphis will have one more chance to right the ship before conference play begins when they host Vanderbilt at the Mike Rose Soccer Complex Saturday at 7 p.m.
"It's been good for us to play so many non-conference games before we get to the most important part of our schedule," Grant said. "We need to respond well in the Vanderbilt game. We look forward to being back at home, and hopefully we can get back to playing like we were at the start of the season."
