LISBON — Dan Sylvester couldn’t ask for a better start for his Lisbon boys’ soccer squad against Oak Hill on Tuesday afternoon.

The Greyhounds scored all three of their goals in the first half of a 3-0 victory in an important MVC soccer matchup.

Despite the score, Sylvester was looking for a better effort in the second half. After outshooting Oak Hill 14-1 in the first, the shot total was much closer in the second half as the Greyhounds only had a 6-3 advantage.

“As the season goes on, as we are approaching playoffs, we can’t afford to take any minute off,” Sylvester said. “That’s something we have been talking about all season that we are playing an 80-minute game regardless of what the score is on either side. I thought we weren’t intense enough and we didn’t want to go get it. We kind of settled in and we were okay with that. I wasn’t happy with our second half performance.”

Noah Austin scored two of the Greyhounds’ goals, the first coming 3:05 into the game, set up by Jacob Fursaro.

His second goal at the 16:24 mark of the opening half.

“They looked a little flat, but they kept up with us,” Austin said. “We had a rough second half, but we worked hard in the first, that’s what got us the (win).”

The third goal came off a service ball. After Oak Hill (3-9) blocked a corner from landing in the box, the ball went back outside. The ball was serviced into the six-yard box, where it deflected off of Oak Hill defender Kam Veilleux into the goal with 8:04 remaining.

The amount of offensive chances in the first half allowed Lisbon (8-2-2) to try some new things.

“We have been working a lot on that in practice and we changed our formation a little bit,” Sylvester said. “We pushed Ryley Austin up front. Him and his brother look well together. Noah ended up scoring two goals today and we made a few other changes like that. It was a great start, but the second half was a little bit slow.”

Oak Hill coach Pete Letourneau felt his team was in for a long day from the start.

“We came out really flat, we weren’t going to the ball and we weren’t executing in any passing game,” Letourneau said. “We looked disinterested and fortunately, with about 15 minutes left in the first half, we started to waking up a little bit and competing.”

He was pleased with how the team played in the second half.

“We are a fairly young team still,” Letourneau said. “We came out playing like I expected as we would as I know we could. It wasn’t necessarily our best, but it was how I was expecting. It wasn’t how we came out. We came out flat and terrible.”

nfournier@sunjournal.com

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