The Oak Grove boys soccer team pulled within one game away from sealing their fifth straight region championship after defeating Brandon 3-0 on Tuesday night.
“When we play together, we are very hard to beat,” Oak Grove coach Jesse Lang said. “As long as we remain unselfish, it’s about Oak Grove, not about the one person, then we are good. I think we can play with anybody in the state. We haven’t seen everybody up north, but everybody in the south we have had the opportunity to play. If we play like we did in that first half tonight, then I think we can play with almost anybody.”
After narrowly defeating Brandon (8-5-3, 4-2) on the road in double overtime last week, the Warriors pulled together a dominant first that saw them score all three of their goals in their return to home.
“This is a tough game because we just played Brandon last week,” said Oak Grove forward Cade Ortego, who scored two goals in the win. “Coming off a win from Brandon, it’s harder to beat them a second time than the first time. Everybody came into the game with the right attitude. That’s what will do it.”
In the game’s first minute, Oak Grove scored after Broc Bookout netted the ball as it ricocheted off Brandon’s goalkeeper.
“We have all been playing since we were little kids together,” Ortego said. “We played too many games not to know that one goal isn’t going to win you the game. We knew we had to keep pressing them and create more chances. I don’t think any of us were complacent, but it was nice because we don’t score that early usually.”
Ortego lived up to his own words and scored his first goal in the 15th minute.
“I received it from Julio (Martinez),” Ortego said. “I think Brock drew two defenders out to him because they know that I pass it to Brock a good amount in the box, and so I had the open shot. I think I just surprised the keeper.”
Ortego scored again in the 25th minute after gaining a one-on-one against Brandon’s goalkeeper from 18 yards out.
“He always seems to put himself in a position to score,” Lang said. “He’s around the ball. He puts himself in a place, where if you feed him the ball, he’s got a chance.”
Martinez almost added a fourth goal in the 31st minute for Oak Grove (13-2-1, 5-0), but the shot was called back after offsides was called. Yet, the Warriors outshot Brandon 11-2 in the first half, which resulted from Oak Grove’s plan to win the time of possession. However, in the second half, the Warriors were only able to get five shots off.
“(The plan was to) keep the ball,” Lang said. “If they don’t have it, then they can’t score. We tried to keep possession. We got away from that a little bit. We tried to play a little bit of long ball, and it’s never been very good for us, but whenever we put four or five passes together, we get chances.
“It was t3-0 at the half, and I wanted more. We kind of eased off the throttle a little bit. That’s something we can definitely get better at. I am very proud of our guys because (Brandon is a) good team. They took us to two overtimes over there. We beat them right before at the of the half to keep it from penalty kicks. We played well tonight.”
Oak Grove will now have to defeat Petal on Thursday in the regular-season finale to clinch the region, which the Warriors handed the Panthers a 5-0 defeat back on Jan. 7.
“I have been playing now for three years for Oak Grove (and) I think this is the strongest team we have had,” Ortego said. “Meaning we are all running out there for each other. I have never been on an Oak Grove team where I felt like the other guy had my back as much as I do this year. I think we can all agree on that, and that’s going to take us a long way. We are confident that we can win a state championship this year.”
