Pirates gaining ground
Wednesday’s scoreless tie with nonconference visitor Rio Hondo College was anything but a zero-sum game for Orange Coast.
The Pirates, who dropped their season opener, 3-1, to Chaffey on Friday, solidified things defensively in their second contest, in which OCC managed just one shot on goal.
Sophomore goalkeeper Ryan Brown made eight saves, including six in the second half, to preserve the hosts’ first clean sheet of the campaign.
And the back line of sophomore center defenders Ty O’Connor and Mathew Ellis, as well as freshman outside backs Ervin Herrera and Taylor Kane, helped keep the Roadrunners (4-0-2) off the scoreboard for the first time all season.
Herrera played at Estancia High.
“We’ve definitely been giving up too many goals, so it was good that we got the shutout today,” OCC Assistant Coach Glenn Strachan said. “We were way better defensively and Ryan made some big-time saves for us. I thought everybody in the back was good, though [O’Connor] stood out.”
Brown seemed to be in the right place all afternoon, making a handful of stops on close-range shots by a Rio Hondo team that had scored 17 times in its first five games.
“I think we absolutely learned a lot today,” Brown said. “I think offensively, we still have to fix a few things. We didn’t play our best today, but I think we can learn a lot just by getting these results, which we feel are negative. I think it’s actually a good thing that we’re learning from these negative results, so we can end up making it a positive.”
There is a lot of positivity around this OCC team, which Strachan and Brown said represents a strong collection of individual skill.
“It’s a very talented team that has the makings to be good,” Strachan said. “We just need to put it all together.”
Putting things together offensively proved challenging for the Pirates, who had just one of its five shots after halftime.
The best scoring chance for the hosts (0-1-1) came in the 31st minute, when freshman forward Peter Marquez, a Costa Mesa High product, went parallel to the turf to head a cross off the crossbar from about 15 yards out.
OCC sophomore forward Curtis Taniguchi’s blast from the top of the box was deflected wide in the final moments.
“We have to clean things up, offensively,” Strachan said. “But we were way better defensively [than Friday] and we gave [the Roadrunners] a run for their money. I don’t think we were at our best and yet I think we played a pretty good team that hasn’t lost, to a scoreless tie.”
Brown, a captain, contributes more that just stopping shots. He barked out direction to his teammates to orchestrate the defense, as well as some offensive flow during the contest.
“I just try to bail out the defense as much as I can by using my feet and coming out with my hands,” Brown said. “I try to organize the defense as much as I can so the other team can’t break though us easily. I think I made an adjustment [from Friday] by talking more today and keeping us organized.
“Today was all about positioning for me. I never had to make that big-time save, but I think it was a matter of me shuffling to the right spot and getting in position to be there for the save.”
OCC will attempt to position itself for its first win on Tuesday, when it plays host to Long Beach at 7 p.m.