Probably the toughest way to lose a soccer match is by an own goal, and that's exactly what happened to Jalen Harvey and his DePaul University Men’s Soccer teammates at Wish Field.
After fighting back to tie Northwestern in the second half, an errant deflection in an attempt to protect the net in the 86th minute became the winning goal in a 2-1 nonconference loss.
DePaul came out with renewed vigor early in the second half, focused on finding the equalizer to a Joey Calistri score in the 19th minute.
After a foul on Northwestern, Hans Wustling sent a nice cross into the box where Jalen Harvey knocked in his first goal of the season in the 58th minute.
"In our pregame meeting, we talked about how the Northwestern goalkeeper is new, and we wanted to put the ball near him and see what happened," Harvey said. "Hans sent the ball in and Erik Rodriguez was right in there with me.
"Erik did well to get out of the way and kept the goalkeeper's vision blocked. I was right in front of an open net. It felt good to get off the mark, but it would have been better to win the game.
"We are the most unlucky guys. We know we have a quality team, but things are not going our way. We just have to move on to the next game."
"It was a good game, and the guys played well," said DePaul coach Craig Blazer. "We regrouped at halftime and didn't give that much away in the first half.
"The way we came out early in the second half and tied the game, you could see the effort was there. We maintained a high level of intensity, possession and defensive control.
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