Men’s soccer lost their four straight game 2-1 to the University of Green Bay-Wisconsin yesterday afternoon. 

Green Bay snapped its five game losing streak where they scored no goals by scoring two goals in the first half against Eastern.

Eastern head coach Mark Hansen was not on the sideline for this game due to a red card he was awarded in last Saturday’s game against Western Illinois.

Assistant head coach Jake Plant had to take over Hansen’s duties for yesterday’s game. Conor Bartuch who also had a red card against Western was not on the sideline either.

This was Plant’s first game coaching, but he said nothing changed due to his role in the past games with Hansen.

“We are always on the same wavelength, we are always discussing things and making sure we’re on the same wavelengths in terms of how we beat our opponent, how we go about defending our opponent and everything that we do on the field is a combined effort,” Plant said.

Green bay’s Jordan Dover scored the games first goal in the 15^th minute. Dover’s third goal of the season came off of a feed by Lawrence Talery in front of the net.

Eastern answered in the 30th minute when Tayron Martin scored his first goal of the season.

Martin got a pass from Spencer Filosa in the front net where he kicked it in passed the goalkeeper. Filosa earned his first point of the year with the assist.

The game winner came near the end of the first half in the 41st minute when Faycal Oulahbib got a feed in behind a pair of Eastern defenders and beat goalkeeper Mike Novotny for the goal. Trey Benhart was credited with the assist, his second of the year.

Plant didn’t think him being the coach today affected the team’s play.

“Nothing really dropped purely because of just me on the sideline and that’s credit to Mark for doing a great job,” he said. “We need some players to start stepping up for the end of the season to get where we need to be and I think we saw that in glimpses today.”

Shots were even 17-17 on the game due to a fury of shots near the end of the game for Eastern. Novotny got the start again for Eastern and made four saves while giving up two goals. Kyle Ihn started for Green Bay and gave up one goal while making five saves.

Green Bay improved its record to 4-8-3 while Eastern drops to 2-10-1. This was the first game played on Lakeside Field since Sept. 8 due to the conditions from heavy rain.

Eastern has its last conference home game against Fort Wayne at 1 p.m. on Sunday.

Mark Shanahan can be reached at 581-2812 or mmshanahan@eiu.edu.