SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – The Northern Illinois University men's soccer team played its first exhibition match of the season on Monday night (Aug. 16), falling to 12th-ranked Missouri State, 2-1, at the Betty & Bobby Allison South Stadium. The Bears scored two in the opening half hour before Miguel Maynez Jr. (El Paso, Texas/New Mexico) cut the deficit in half with just over 20 minutes remaining on a goal assisted by Edgar Serrano (Sedro-Woolley, Wash./Mount Vernon).

"Missouri State is a really good team and the opening 20 minutes they looked a lot more comfortable than us and were dictating the game," said NIU head coach Ryan Swan. "As we settled in, after they scored, we realized that we could play with them and started to have some really good looks. Midway through the first half until the end it was a really good contest, we created some good chances and are a little bit disappointed to have only scored one tonight."

Coming just at the end of the first week of preseason, the Huskies were able to get 22 different players game time, including four newcomers to the NIU roster. 

"You always want to win the game," said Swan. "But the bigger thing for us is to see where we were as a squad. Our plan was always to try to get the guys about 60 minutes each and we got that for just about everybody. I was really happy that there was just about no drop-off in quality, the freshmen that came in, guys that were getting their first college experience against a very good team, they looked comfortable in there. I thought that we were playing at a pretty high level throughout the night." 

After getting on the field for the first time this fall last Tuesday (Aug. 10), Swan and his staff have been pleased with the early progression in camp.

"We are happy about where we are at," said Swan. "We maintained a high-level tonight, which speaks to our fitness. The guys have come back in good shape which is allowing us to focus on the important things. We are relatively healthy, we have a couple of guys with minor knocks that didn't play tonight, but they should be back soon. We have been very happy with the progress in preseason and now that we have played an actual game, we can evaluate the good and the bad of where we need to improve." 

Monday's matchup with Missouri State was the first of two exhibition contests for the Huskies. NIU will host Purdue Northwest on Friday afternoon, August 20, at 1 p.m. at the NIU Soccer and Track & Field Complex.