GAFFNEY, S.C. – Battling a top five team for the second time this season, Carson-Newman (2-4-3, 1-2-1 SAC) ran into one of the hottest teams in the country, falling 5-0 to fifth-ranked Limestone (7-0-1, 5-0 SAC) on Sunday at Saints Field.
"It was men against boys today and embarrassing at times," Carson-Newman head coach Stephen Lyons said. "When you continue to make the same mistakes in areas where good teams punish you, you need to make better decisions. Limestone is a very good team and you cannot gift them opportunity after opportunity as clinical as they are in the final third. Certainly, it is a reality check for this group and staff to lead quickly, otherwise the season could be very short. When things in the flow of the game or with results not going your way, you need big characters to show up and unite the group. I question if we have that as a group right now."
The Saints wasted no time getting the scoring started. Geru Gregor flicked a pass to Kaiss Mansouri who slotted a shot from the top of the box into the bottom right corner to make it 1-0 Limestone in the 12th minute.
Less than 90 seconds went by, and Mansouri struck again. This time it was a feed from Claudel N'goubou that allowed Mansouri to take just one touch with his left foot to shoot it into the upper left corner to make it 2-0 Saints.
Carson-Newman settled in and began to gain some possession, which resulted in the Eagles getting the match's first corner kick in the 19th minute.
Federico Simonetti (Crema, Italy) made a pair of saves to keep it a 2-0 game. In the 28th minute, Shunsuke Nakamoto had a good look near the six-yard box but came up empty. It was similar for Geraldo Lopez in the 35th minute but Simonetti made another quality stop.
A good run forward in the 39th minute gave Carson-Newman its best chance of the opening half. Mitchell Honcoop ( ) settled a cross to his feet and fired some outside the box forcing Limestone's goalkeeper Nikolaj Bertelsen to make a diving save to his left.
The Eagles took the first shot after halftime. It came from Antoine Torrent (Clermont ferrand, France) who missed the target wide right.
Limestone extended its lead in the 68th minute. Stefan Roeb sent a quality cross into the box that was headed into the back of the net by Falk Jorch.
The Saints scored twice more in the final 20 minutes.
Carson-Newman was outshot 19-3 and 11-1 on goal. The game only featured a total of three corners, with C-N taking one of them.
Dukes, Honcoop and Torrent took C-N's three shots in the match.
Simonetti made six saves in goal for C-N.
Carson-Newman gets a week off before returning to action at home versus Mars Hill on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. A live stream of the game is available with a subscription to FloSports at cneagles.com/flomsoc.
Fans can also follow along by following @CN_Eagles on X (Twitter) and Instagram for in-game updates.
