The Binghamton men’s soccer team fell to Vermont by a final score of 4-0 on the road Saturday night. The Catamounts (7-4-0, 2-1-0 America East) started the scoring early when their sophomore midfielder Joe Morrison netted a goal in the 11th minute. With four seconds left in the half, Vermont freshman midfielder Hans Oeftger scored the first goal of his career to make it 2-0. Coming right before the break, the second goal stung for the Bearcats.

“We concede a goal with three seconds left in the half on a nothing,” said Binghamton head coach Paul Marco. “I mean, it was a 50-50 ball in their half, a kid goes up and clears it, there’s 10 seconds left and we just need to kick the ball out of bounce, and we do nothing. We just let the kid run with the ball and get a shot, and we are there to make a play and we don’t. I think that’s been the story this season to us, when you are there to make a play, you need to do things instead of letting things happen, and it’s almost like we think someone else will take care of it.”

The Bearcats (3-7-1, 0-3-0 AE) didn’t have that many shots on net, and they created limited offensive pressure. In the first half, Binghamton had five shots to Vermont’s six.

“It’s extremely disappointing,” Marco said. “We fight really hard to get behind opponents, and we train really hard to break down opponents and we tried to negate their attack. Talk about how people try to attack us, all they really do is put balls forward and run onto them for a goal. From a soccer-playing standpoint, they were deliberate and forceful in what they did, and they were very good at it.”

Binghamton was unable to contain Vermont’s freshman midfielder Frosti Brynjólfsson. He had four points on the night, with two assists and one goal.

Just a minute and five seconds into the second half, Vermont scored another goal. This time, senior defender Ívar Örn Árnason scored off a cross from Brynjólfsson.

Trailing by three, Binghamton battled to try and hold the deficit, but in the 62nd minute of the game, Brynjólfsson capped off his night with a goal, giving the Catamounts a 4-0 shutout win.

With the loss, BU falls to 0-3 in conference play as the teams looks toward a game against Stony Brook next week. Marco has to hope that his team will bounce back during practice next week and up its intensity.

“I want our team to beat the heck out of each other next week in training,” Marco said. “Show up and out-compete the opponent in training this week. If we do that, we’ll manage the physicalness, we’ll manage the tired legs, we’ll manage how hard they work for how long they work, but they need to come to kick every ass in training because, right now, that’s the only thing that’s beating us. It’s not about soccer playing, it’s not about the qualities we have with the ball. Right now we are getting out-competed.”

Marco said that the Bearcats need to adjust their style of play depending on what team they’re playing.

“When we play teams like Columbia who play soccer similar to us, we play really well, and when we play against teams that try to bang a nail into the board, we are like pine and the nail goes right through the board, and that’s what happened today,” Marco said. “This week we are looking for guys to be like steel. Stop attacks, be tough, be gritty. If those things happen, I like our chances on Saturday. If we bring pine next week down to Stony Brook, well, it is just another nail in the coffin.”

Kickoff in the Bearcats’ next contest against the Seawolves is set for 7 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 19 at Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium in Stony Brook, New York.