UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS – Junior Jalen Jackson and freshman Devon Maki combined for seven of the eight Wilmington goals as the Fightin' Quakers fell to John Carroll Saturday, 20-8, in Ohio Athletic Conference action at Don Shula Stadium.
Jackson (Hilliard, OH/Bradley) led the way with four goals and one assist, while Maki (Pickerington, OH/Central) added three goals in the loss.
"We still need to work on some ball movement and making the one more pass," said Wilmington head coach Domenic Marzano. "But when we had the ball tonight, we were successful against a very good JCU team. We limited our turnovers, which I am very happy with. We just need to create more possessions so we have opportunities to score and control team."
John Carroll scored three goals in the final 90 seconds of the first period to open up a 7-1 lead. Maki tallied the lone WC goal in the period, finding the back of the net with 7:54 remaining. Jackson scored the first goal of the second period, but the Blue Streaks scored three straight.
Maki and Jackson sandwiched a JCU goal to end the second period, and the Fightin' Quakers trailed 11-4.
Freshman Jhordan Lang (Sunbury, OH/Big Walnut) was the only other WC player to score, tallying a power-play goal with 7:16 remaining. Jackson had the assist on the play. Maki added another goal with 2:54 remaining to pull Wilmington to within eight, 14-6.
Jackson added two fourth-period goals to round out the Wilmington scoring.
"We need to win more faceoffs and stay out of the penalty box so we can have more possessions," said Marzano. "We had almost 10 minutes of penalties, which we need to fix to be able to compete in the OAC. We didn't have the ball a whole lot and still took 30 shots. I was happy with the shot selection."
Wilmington won just 6-of-32 faceoff attempts, including none in the first period as they fell behind.
Sophomore Paul Koerbel (Maineville, OH/Kings) took the loss in goal, allowing 18 goals on 30 shots in 51:38 of action.
Wilmington (7-5 overall, 0-3 OAC) travels to Cincinnati 7 p.m. Wednesday to face Mount St. Joseph in non-conference action.